What the Water Gave Me (A Stucky AU)
by BlitheBells
Summary: A mute!siren!Bucky and skinny!Steve AU. You can find this story on AO3 and Wattpad Rated for some descriptions of violence and gore.
1. Prologue

A dark-haired head bobbed just under the water, eyes studying an approaching ship. He looked up and stared at it, let it pass, and read the words on the side. "The Commando", the ship was called, and he ran his tongue over his teeth hungrily. He began to follow alongside the ship, pumping his tail. He was alone, which meant for less competition, and a human off this ship would make a great meal. He was anxious for the catch.

He followed it for a ways, watching men move about the top, and he prepared himself to sing. And he was going to do it too when one man exited a cabin and walked out onboard and his song stuck in his throat. He lifted himself a little more above the waves to stare.

The man was small, smaller than the rest, but he was beautiful. He had golden hair that glittered and pretty pink lips and he in the water was stunned into inaction. Something inside him hurt when he looked at the man. Something inside him wanted to look more.

And suddenly, something inside him told him not to sing.

Instead, he followed along with the ship further, watching the man converse with the others, watching him walk, and once, the man came to the railing above where he swam below and he thought if he was only closer, if he was only higher, he could even touch the man, could look at him forever. He'd never felt this way before. He was rather appalled, somehow afraid, and he wasn't sure what to make of it. It wasn't hunger he felt when he looked at the man. Quite the opposite, in fact, he was certain he'd never want to kill him or eat him.

He wasn't sure what to make of this and so after a few more seconds, he tore his eyes away and dove back into the water. But he'd find the man again. He'd find that ship, the Commando, and he'd watch it. He wanted to see that man again.

_Author's Note_

_I'm gonna admit right here and now that I've always had a huge weakspot for disgustingly creative AUs. I've got a few planned and this is just one._

_To those who are worried about _To Go Unseen_, I'm here to tell you that it's okay. I'm still working actively on it and still working towards a good, solid ending. It'll get done, I promise. But I thought it might be fun to share with you some other projects I've been working on! I hope this is as fun to read as it was to write._

_I know the cover is lacking. I don't know if I'll be able to get anything much better, but I'm always open to suggestions from readers._

_And as always, thank you for reading and thank you for being fantastic. 3_

_-BlitheBells_


	2. Chapter One

BOOK ONE

Chapter One

When the ship crashed, he was there and he saw the whole thing. The storm was terrible and he bobbed on top of the waves, watching. He swam closer and watched the bow of the ship crack in half and someone on the top fell screaming into the ocean. He watched and considered attacking, but he had more important things to do. He had to make sure the man was alright. _His_ man, the one with the slight shoulders and the pretty mouth. He was being a guardian angel that night, although an angel with fangs and claws.

As the storm grew worse, the ship crashed back and forth and he saw the man he was looking for stumble onto the deck and grip the railing. Wind whipped at his blonde hair.

And then he watched the ship surge and the man tumble over in a mess of flailing limbs and a splash. He watched in horror and then dove into the waves to go after him.

He was close, but the man was sinking fast, no matter how hard he kicked and fought the tumultuous waves. He swam to the man as fast as he could, pumping his tail as fast as he could go and the man saw him then appearing out of the dark water and his eyes widened. The man started trying to swim away, but he didn't get far as a heavy piece of his own ship crashed into the water and hit him. The man fell lax then and he watched bubbles of saved air escape from his lips.

He caught up to him and wrapped his arms around the man. He pulled him in through the water and towards his chest, then began swimming as fast as he could to the surface. When they broke out onto the top of the water, he held the man up with both hands, one made of flesh and one made of water, to the air.

Breathe! He thought and the man didn't.

He didn't know much about humans, but he knew they took air into their lungs like water and if they weren't doing that, there was something gravely wrong. With the man's face still held to the black sky, he began swimming frantically towards the shore. They reached the sand in record time and he pushed the man up past the water and onto the sand where rain water pelted.

Breathe! He thought again. The man didn't and he watched from the safety of the ocean, panicking.

When he couldn't stand to watch anymore, he he pushed himself out of the water. His watery left arm washed away with the sea and he was stranded with one right arm and a useless tail to drag himself with up towards the man on the sand. He'd never done this before. He'd never even been so close to shore before. And honestly, he would have been afraid, but he was too overwhelmed with fear for the man.

His hair became plastered down to his face and the back of his neck and water ran off his chest, leaving his skin goosebump ridden in the cold air. He dragged himself up close to the man and looked down. The man was going pale, turning blue, and he panicked. What do you do when a human refuses to breathe?!

He didn't know what he was doing, but instinct guided the heel of his palm to the middle of the man's small chest and he began to push. When that didn't work, his eyes travelled up to the man's lips and another idea came to mind, one that made him want to push himself back into the ocean as fast as he could, but something was urging him to try, and so he scooted closer to the man's face and gently opened his lips and pressed his own mouth there, trying to breathe in for him.

He was sure this had never been done by anyone before, and he pulled away a few moments later, embarrassed, but that's when he noticed the man coughing and sputtering up water and sucking in air. The man was wracked with horrible spasms and his breathing sounds were wet and awful and he didn't know what to do now, so he grabbed him as best he could with one hand and hauled him up onto his lap and hugged him to his chest until it all stopped and the man's breaths began to come in and out quietly and evenly. Just the same, the rain around them began to calm.

He set the man back onto the beach and started to try and scoot himself away, but the man's eyes were still closed and he didn't quite want to stop looking at him yet. He put his ear down over the man's chest, to make sure his heart was beating, obviously, and held his face just above the man's skin. A few hesitant seconds later, he let himself rest his head as gently as possible on the man's frail chest. He could feel the man's exhale against the top of his head and his heart beating underneath his face and the flushing heat of his skin and he stayed there longer than he should have, enjoying him. Slowly, his eyes fluttered closed.

Then, he felt the man suck in a big breath, an unexpected breath, a _gasp_, and he jerked himself off of his chest immediately. The man was starting to try to sit up on his elbows and he was staring at him with wide eyes and an open mouth. He stared back for a panicked fraction of a second, noticing that his eyes were blue, noticing that they looked scared, and then he began to try and drag himself back into the ocean. His tail was nothing but a giant dead weight on land, no matter how hard he tried to kick with it, and he was using his hand to try and claw himself backwards, but it was slow going, and the man was starting to stand and he was so scared he thought he might scream. Things like him didn't scream. Things like him sang and things like him killed. But he supposed things like him also did not save drowning ship captains and if he was going to be unusual, why not also be the first thing like him to scream?

The man was hauling himself shakily to his feet and he was no where near the water yet, but hotness was pooling in his eyes, something he recognized only faintly as tears, tears of fear, and then the man was raising his hands and he flinched away, squeezing his eyes shut for a blow that didn't come. He opened his eyes a second later, surprised, to see that the man was only holding his hands up in a sort of peace gesture, showing him his open palms. His lips parted and he stared, looking the man up and down, frozen.

"I'm not gonna hurt you," the man promised. His voice was beautiful and rich, deeper than he had imagined coming from such a small, thin chest, but he liked it. It was a nice voice. He must sing well, he thought. "Who are you?" The man asked and he didn't know what to do. "Can you answer me?" He shook his head back and forth in a no.

Speaking, that was a human thing. Singing was for things like him, but things like him only ever sang if they were killing people. He didn't want to kill the man.

"Did you save me?" The man asked incredulously and he nodded slowly. The man got down on his hands and knees and began to come closer to him and he pulled himself away again. "Hey," the man said. "Hey, I said I wasn't gonna hurt you, alright? I'm gonna help you get back into the ocean, okay? I'll pull you. Is that okay?" He considered this for a moment and then nodded again silently. The man stood and came around him and he felt him hook one elbow under his right arm and wrap the other arm around his chest and he looked down to see pretty, slender hands spread across his skin and then the man began to pull. He tried pumping with his tail again, kicking sand up into the air, and the man chided him. "Cut that out!" He cried. "It's not helping, okay?"

Okay, he thought quietly and he looked up, twisted his head back as far as it would go to see the man's face above his, straining to help pull him. Then, he felt the water on the back of his tail, cold and welcoming, and his fingertips brushed the top and as soon as he was far enough in, he was able to push himself away from the man. Underneath the top of the water, his left hand was forming again right where he would have set it if he'd had it.

He could have left then, and he should have, but he didn't. The man stood there in front of him, leaning over his knees and breathing hard and then he looked up at him and smiled. The man had a beautiful smile and he tried to retaliate, tried to make the same face, but when he did, the man stopped smiling and looked instead rather horrified.

"Oh!" He said. "Y-You have fish teeth. You have pointed teeth." He stopped smiling as well, a little hurt that the man hadn't found his smile as nice as he'd found his, and pressed his lips together, self conscious now of his teeth. He supposed he hadn't thought of that. He should have thought of that. "None of us, we've never been around a siren long enough to find out and live to tell, I guess," the man breathed. He only stared back, and then the man was reaching forward those thin, slender fingers and he froze. The man's fingers brushed his face,wiping his hair away, he realized, brushing it back so he could see, and he sat very, very still. He wondered if his face might be better to look at than his teeth and he hoped the man would smile again. But when his hair was finally back and he looked up into the man's face, he wasn't smiling. Instead, his mouth was open and he was staring.

"Bucky?" He cried and he was too scared now, too confused, too hurt, and he started to push himself away from the man and further back into the water. Bucky? What was a bucky? What did that mean? "No, wait," the man started to say and began to follow and he pushed himself away faster. His arm immediately under the top of the water came closer and closer to meeting his chest until finally he was deep enough that he could feel it reach back up into his shoulder, complete again, but the man was still wading out further and further in a panic that scared him to death. "Wait, Bucky! Bucky!" The man stopped when he stopped and they stared at each other for a while, yards away, ocean between them. The man looked sad. He looked heartbroken. "Bucky," the man said again and dropped the hands that were outstretched, and his tone of voice scared him so much, he turned around and dove back into the water and left as fast as he possibly could.


	3. Chapter Two

Chapter Two

He found him again on the shore a few days later, right where they'd left each other. The man was sitting cross-legged in the sand and staring out at the ocean and he remembered the feel of his chest under his cheek and missed it. He did not miss the expressions on the man's face, however. Maybe that's why things like him never saved humans. Eating them was much easier, feelings-wise.

He was a far enough distance away that the man couldn't see him, but the tide pushed him closer and closer and he let it, let it push him so close his arm disconnected from his shoulder under the waves. The man spotted him soon enough and leaped to his feet.

"Bucky!" He yelled and began waving his arms in the air. He approached the man cautiously and stayed just far enough away that he could still turn around and swim away if he had to and the man waded out again into the water. He let him get closer and closer until his shadow fell over his face and he looked up at him, his lips pressed shut and his heart beating wildly in his chest. The man sunk to his knees in the water so they could look at each other eye to eye and the man stared at him and swallowed hard. He stared back. "Can I look at you?" He asked gently.

Well, you already are, he thought, but he only nodded silently. He felt the man's eyes travel down his face and his chest and over to his bare, empty shoulder. He put his slender hands there and examined him. Under the water, he turned his hand to show him and the man looked down and gasped.

"Is that your hand?" He asked and he gave a small, close-lipped smile and nodded. The man reached down under the water and took his hand, turning it over and examining his fingers. "This is made of water," he said. "But it's solid."

It's like magic, he thought. It's like a gift. It's also sometimes like a tether. He wished he could share his thoughts with the man.

The man moved on eventually and took his other hand. He spanned out the small, scaly webs between his fingers for the man to see. His fingernails were like his teeth, which was to say, they were more like claws than fingernails, and they were hard and pointed and razor-like and the man ran his thumb over one and came up with blood. He tore his hand back from the man then and gave him a hard look, stern and somehow disturbed, and the man only smiled a little carelessly and put his thumb into his mouth.

"Don't worry about it, Buck," he said. "It's fine."

He realized that he knew what the man's blood would taste like in his mouth and instead of feeling hungry, he just felt his stomach turn and he forced himself to stop thinking about it.

He didn't know why the man was calling him Bucky and Buck. Maybe it was a sort of nickname, he thought. For someone who didn't have a name. He didn't know why. He liked it, though.

The man reached up then and touched his lips gently with the fingers that weren't bleeding and he pulled away and shook his head, frowning.

"I'm not gonna cut myself on your _teeth_, if that's what you're thinking," the man scoffed and he shook his head sheepishly. The man frowned in thought, and then spoke again. "Wait, last time. Did I hurt your feelings?" This time, he smiled, close-lipped and short, just quick enough and small enough not to reach his eyes, and the man let out a breath. "Huh," he said. "A siren with feelings? Well," he started to correct himself. "I guess you're also Bucky. That complicates things." The man looked at him and sighed. "Alright, look, I'm sorry, okay? I was just surprised, that's all. I sort of expected square teeth, like mine, see?" The man opened his mouth and showed to him those square teeth. "Now, would you please let me see?"

He considered for a moment and then shook his head.

"Alright, I promise I won't say anything," the man bargained. He pretended to think about this and then a smile pulled up at the corner of his mouth and he gave in, parting his lips and baring his teeth and letting the man examine him. The man whistled. He closed his mouth after a while and gave a small, stilted smile with one corner, but the man had already moved on. His fingers were brushing his face and the man took his face in both hands and turned his head, brushing his hair back and running the tips of his fingers over the scaly gills on the side of his neck. The man's fingers found more scales later, found them everywhere, from cropping up on the back of his right hand to sprinkled over his tummy to running up nearly half the length of his back. They were iridescent and shiny, looking like green and blue and pink all at once, and he knew they were coated in a layer slimy residue. He wondered if the man found them gross. When the man's hands ran down his chest and towards his tail, he brought it around in front of him, laid it there beside them both, and flipped the tip of it playfully. He looked over at the man and smiled a little and the man smiled back, then ran his hands gently along the length of his tail, all the way to the tip. But there were barbs there that the man wouldn't be able to see, so he reached forward quickly and grabbed up his hand before he got there to stop him, and when the man looked over, surprised, he shook his head with a frown.

"Why not?" The man asked and he pointed back and flexed his tail. Now the barbs were more than visible, big and black and ridged and coming out down the sides and on the front. "Oh," the man whispered and he grabbed up his hand again and pointed to his cut thumb. "Yeah, I get it, I'd cut myself," the man said and he shook his head. He pointed at the cut again, then at his tail, and then pulled his finger across his neck and stuck his tongue out of his mouth.

They're poison, he thought, as though thinking the words might project them into the man's head. Poison, okay?

The man seemed to understand now and he paled. He relaxed his tail and the barbs sunk back into him, again only visible to a trained eye.

The man sat back on his butt in the water and stared at him, as though taking him in as a whole now, but he wouldn't let him. He reached forward and grabbed his wrist and pulled him closer, then put his webbed hand on the man's cheek.

"What are you doing?" The man asked and he turned his head and ran the pads of his fingers down the side of his neck where no gills were and lifted up his hand where no webs were. "Oh," the man said with a smile and a laugh. "You want a turn?"

It wasn't that he didn't know a human's body the way the man didn't know his. After all, he'd torn apart enough of them to know they had no scales and no gills and no claws. But he wanted a chance to examine this particular human. He wanted a chance to run his hands over him, too.

He thumped his hand on his chest and cocked his head at the man.

"What?" The man said and he tried it again, but the man didn't get it, so he reached forward and clawed through his shirt. The man did not seem to like this, however, and he panicked and pulled away. "Hey!" He cried. "What was that?!"

He didn't know what to do now and he raised his hand slowly, holding out his palm the way the man had before and raising his eyebrows.

Then, he thumped his chest again and this time made a pulling motion, like tugging fabric and the man furrowed his eyebrows.

"You want my shirt off?" He cried. "You could have asked instead of trying to slice me in two, you animal."

Oh. His eyes widened and he cringed. The man was mad. He shook his head a little remorsefully and began to pull himself back out further into the water, retreating. He'd leave now, if the man wanted him to, if the man was angry with him. He wouldn't get to touch the man, but at least the man had touched him and that would have to be enough.

_You animal_. The corners of his mouth pulled down.

"No, Bucky, wait, don't go," the man cried and came closer, reaching out for him. "Hold on, I'm sorry, okay? Don't leave, I'm sorry I said that, okay, you just scared me, alright? I mean, sure, you're Bucky, but you're also a siren and, um, that's kinda scary, okay?" He stopped in the water and looked him up and down. "Come back," the man pleaded. "Please?"

He couldn't say no to the man. He would never be able to as long as he lived and so he swam closer again, brought himself back.

He wished he could speak, so he could tell the man he was sorry.

Once he returned, the man ripped up the remaining shreds of his shirt and pulled it off himself. He hesitantly put his hand up to him, bringing his hand closer and closer to the man's chest slowly and looking up again and again to make sure he was still smiling, to make sure it was still okay. And it was, even until he pressed his hand to the man's skin and felt his heart and his heat. He slid his hand down carefully and his left explored the portion of his stomach that was underwater.

He sort of wanted to kiss the man, but he wasn't sure the man would want to get that close to his teeth, so instead he kissed his fingertips and pressed them to the man's cheek. The man reached up and cupped his hand and held it there and he felt butterflies in his stomach.

"Can you tell me what happened to you?" The man asked quietly. "H-How you, um… Became this way?" He looked at him and his brow furrowed, confused. He cocked his head again. The man blinked. "After you fell overboard," he said. "You were human a few years ago, Buck." He pulled away from him a little now and stared, jerking his hand back, searching his face for signs of a lie, confused. The man stared back and gave an uncomfortable laugh. "You're looking at me like you don't know what I'm talking about," he said and he slowly shook his head in agreement. The man's face fell. "What? You don't know what I'm talking about?" He shook his head again. "Then who are you?"

He wasn't sure how to answer. He gave a weak, frightened shrug.

The man sat back, looking stunned, and pushed his hair back with his wet hands. The man looked at him with wide eyes.

"Are you Bucky?" The man asked. He was becoming distressed now. They both were, but he was panicking. He shrugged his shoulders again fast. The man looked angry. "Why didn't you say anything?" He cried and he put his fingertips to his mouth and then down to his throat. The man groaned. "No, I _know_ you can't say anything, but you know what I mean!" He shrugged for a third time, leaning away, slowly pushing himself away. "You let me go on and on and…" The man trailed off and then got to his feet and started to stumble away. "And you might be just a siren! That's all! I might have been sitting here this whole time like an idiot with a thing that wants to eat my heart out!"

I don't! He wanted to cry and he reached out with one hand and the man pulled away faster, stumbling over his feet and hitting the water again with a splash.

"Don't touch me!" The man cried and he pulled his hand back quickly. "Get away!"

_You animal_, he heard in his head again and tears stung his eyes again and he turned around and dove back into the water and swam quickly away.


	4. Chapter Three

Chapter Three

The next day, he found a ship. He followed along for a while and fought off a few other things like him over it, then swam up ahead of the ship and pushed his head above the water. He began to sing, a song with words only in their minds, and a couple men stumbled to the edge of the ship. He ducked under just enough so they couldn't see him and continued to sing and then, one of the men stood up on the edge of the ship and leapt off.

He caught up to the sinking human and attacked in an instant, digging claws into meaty shoulders and baring his teeth. But suddenly, instead of the human in his hands, he saw the man, the man with a dazed expression on his face, the man with his claws in his shoulders knuckles deep, and he blanched. He pulled his fingers out of the human's flesh and stared, stunned.

The human flew out of the water and hit the deck of his own ship a few seconds later, bloody and coughing up water, but otherwise unharmed, and he swam away from the ship frustratedly. He couldn't even bring himself to lick his fingers.

He found a few other ships in the following days, heeding his aching stomach, and every human he caught, he threw back. It had been almost a few weeks since he'd eaten, however, and he was starting to really feel it, but he saw the face of the man in every stinking human on every stinking human ship and he couldn't force himself to eat a single one of them.

Finally, angry with himself but not sure what else to do, he caught a shark and dug it's heart out with his fingers and he thought he was going to puke, it tasted so bad, but he ate it anyway. A few smaller things like him found him in the middle of this and started laughing and he tore them apart, too.

He missed the man. He wanted to see the man again, but he wasn't sure the man wanted to see him. Not after before, not after the Bucky thing. He wondered who Bucky was. He'd gone overboard, the man had said. He wondered if Bucky had been eaten.

He returned to the place he'd seen the man before a few more times and the man wasn't there until one day, he was. He found him napping on the beach, close to the shore, and he had next to him a thick pad of paper and a pen. The side of the man's face turned to the sun was beet red and he winced a little looking at him, knowing that it would hurt.

He took a chance and shimmied up onto the shore and shook the man's shoulder gently. The man jumped and looked up at him hovering above, water running in rivulets down his face, and screamed. His eyes widened and his heart stopped and he dove away, making a splash back into the water. He swam a few yards away and then poked the top of his head up above the water, just enough to see and the man was poking at the burned side of his face gently and wincing. The man looked back out over the water and he watched him rub his face and stand. He started to pace along the shore, then he cupped his hands over his mouth and shouted.

"I know you can hear me!" The man yelled. "I know you didn't go far!"

He took a big gulp of water and pulled himself down just further so that the water lapped at his open eyes.

"Come back? Please?" The man continued to yell. "I brought paper, pens! We can talk!" He didn't think he'd ever held a pen. He didn't know if he could write human language. He looked down at his hands with their webs and didn't know if it would work at all, but he supposed he could try. He looked up and pulled himself a little further out of the water so the man could see him. The relief on his face was visible even from the distance and he started waving. "Hey!" He said. "Hey, look what I brought you!"

He swam closer and closer until he was finally right up on the shoreline again and he lay in that inch of water and looked at the man mournfully. The man looked at him and sighed.

"You gotta understand," he said. "I don't mean to keep scaring you but, well, you _are_ kind of scary. The way you look at me sometimes, I don't know if you want to kiss me or swallow me."

He brought his fingers to his lips again and blew the man a kiss and smiled innocently and the man laughed.

"See, that's just it," he said. "You blow me kisses and then grin at me with sharp teeth."

What else am I supposed to grin at you with? He thought and he tried to convey that through his body language, raising an eyebrow at him and throwing his hand up. The man scrambled for his paper and then pushed it in front of him, holding out the pen.

"Write it," he instructed. "Write what you want to say."

He took the pen from him and wiggled his fingers around it. It fit uncomfortably in the space between his thumb and his forefinger, pushing right up where a web of scaly flesh started, but at least he could hold it. He looked anxiously at the white paper. He still wasn't entirely sure he could write human language.

"Sorry for teeth," he finally wrote, sucking on his bottom lip and concentrating on forming each letter correctly. "Don't want to scare you."

He pushed the pad towards the man now and the man took it and turned it around and squinted at it.

"Oh," the man said and then he smiled over the top of the paper at him. "Well…" The man seemed at a loss for words and then he settled on smiling. "Thank you."

He tapped his fingers on the side of his face and then pointed a few feet down towards a shaded area of the beach, one with a tall stone cliff.

The man handed him the pad back.

"Write it," the man said again and he rolled his eyes, but took the pen.

"You burn," he wrote painstakingly slowly. "Shade? For you?"

The man read it and looked over to where he pointed and nodded.

"Yeah," the man said. "That's a good idea. Thanks."

He shrugged a little and gave a small smile. The man helped him retreat into the water and he beat his tail, swimming to the other side of the beach and popping up on the sand there, lying on his stomach and watching the man walk in his direction. He slapped the water with his tail and grinned cheerfully. He hoped he didn't look scary, and if he did, that the man understood. Its not like there was really anything he could do about his teeth, and the man made him happy. The man made him want to smile.

Once the man reached him, he sat down in the cold sand and passed the pad of paper back to him.

"First things first," he said. "What's your name?"

He cocked his head, and wrote on the paper, "no name."

"What do you mean, no name?" The man asked. "What do you call yourself?"

He thought, and then wrote, "thing with teeth."

The man looked at the paper and furrowed his eyebrows again.

"Surely you don't," he said. "Come on now, 'thing with teeth'? That's how you'd identify yourself?"

He shrugged sheepishly.

"What do others call you?" He asked.

"They don't," he replied.

"You don't have any friends?" The man said and he scoffed at this, throwing his head back and opening his mouth in mock laughter. "I see," the man said. "We'll just have to give you a name."

"First things first," he wrote, copying what he'd heard the man say. "Your name?"

"My name is Steve," the man said. "Captain Steve Rogers."

Steve, he thought. And then he thought it again and smiled to himself. Steve. Steve. Steve.

He opened his mouth and tried to say it. Steve.

He made a horrible, pitiful hissing sound that ended in an 'ee-ee-ee' sort of sound and stopped immediately, mortified. The man stared.

"Are you trying to talk?" Steve asked and he covered his face with his hand and nodded weakly. Steve laughed and he became even more humiliated and sunk slowly back into the water so he could cover his face with both hands. "Aww, come on," he heard Steve say and he felt a hand on his shoulder beckoning him back. "That was a good try!"

Once he'd gotten up the courage to come back and take his hands away from his face again, he took the now pretty wet pad of paper and wrote more.

"I'll practice," he wrote. "I'll say it."

"You don't have to," Steve said. "It's alright."

"Want to," he wrote.

"You still need a name," Steve offered and he smiled big.

"Please," he wrote and turned the pad. Steve looked at him and his smile sunk as he considered him and then his shoulders fell and he sighed.

"You look just like Bucky," he told him. "And no one believes me, and you seem pretty confused, but I think you are." He just listened. "Did you know," Steve said. "There's an old wives tale that says that people who die in the ocean are reborn by the ocean? They say all the mermaids and sirens and things like that, that they're really the people the ocean has saved. And I never believed it until now."

He considered this for a long time, and then he took the paper and wrote, "Mermaids?" And rolled his eyes.

Steve grinned.

"What, you've never met a mermaid?" He asked.

"Not real," he wrote back. "Fairytale."

"That's a shame," Steve said.

"Just things like me," he wrote and he could feel his heart sink as he wrote the words. "Just monsters. Sorry."

"You aren't particularly monstrous," Steve said quietly and he looked up at him and half-heartedly bore his teeth and claws.

"Monster." He wrote it on the paper and emphasized the period. Then, he shrugged. "It's fine," he continued. "I know I am."

Steve didn't seem to know what to say until after a while, he wrote, "name?" on the paper pleadingly.

"Bucky," Steve said finally. "I'll call you Bucky."

"Not very scary name," he wrote back teasingly. "For such scary monster."

"Exactly," Steve said and Bucky smiled. "So, I want to know what you know," Steve continued after a while. "I want to know about your life." Bucky made a face and shook his head. "What?" Steve said. "Why not?"

He took the pad of paper and wrote, "ashamed," on it and handed it back. Then, he thought of more and took it from Steve's hands to keep writing. "Life is kill, eat, kill, eat, kill, eat. Thats it," he wrote and he didn't want to watch Steve's face when he handed it reluctantly back.

"Oh," Steve said. "Killing, uh, people."

"Duh," Bucky wrote.

"Okay, well, when were you born?" Steve asked. "How old are you?"

Instead of writing this time, he just shrugged.

"Time is human thing," he finally decided on writing when Steve seemed confused. "Don't know."

"Well, what's the earliest thing you remember?" Steve asked and Bucky thought back.

"Learning to sing," he wrote sheepishly.

"Were you a child?" Steve asked and he shook his head.

"Just like this," he wrote and Steve nodded thoughtfully.

"That's interesting," he said.

"You?" Bucky asked. "Your life?"

"Well," Steve sat back. "I guess I have more to say than you, but I'll try to be brief. I was born here and Bucky, you were too and we were best friends. We got a cargo ship together, called it the Commando, and we were gonna sail it everywhere, but one day, during a storm, you got thrown off. That was a few years ago and I never saw you again."

"Did he have two arms?" Bucky asked, still sort of unwilling to claim the story.

"He did," Steve said. "But you could have lost it. After all, you've got scars there. You weren't born like that." Bucky shook his head a little. "Do you remember losing it?" Steve asked and Bucky shook his head again. "Well, how did you learn to make that water thing?" Steve continued, pointing to the few inches of water where Bucky lay and his hand came up to the top of the water and disappeared. He shrugged again.

"Water does it," he wrote. "All by itself. I do nothing."

"Oh," Steve said. "Wow." Bucky nodded. "Does it do that for other sirens?"

"No other sirens without arms," Bucky wrote. "No sirens I have seen." Then, "they probably all died."

"What?" Steve exclaimed. "Why?"

Bucky thought that Steve must like a very cushy life if he couldn't put these things together. He hoped Steve didn't expect him to be a 'good' monster. Steve didn't really seem to understand how his life worked.

"Can't fight well," Bucky wrote. "Killed by others. Can't hunt well. Starved." He shrugged.

"Can you fight and hunt?" Steve asked and Bucky nodded. "Oh, good," Steve said and he seemed genuinely relieved. Bucky frowned.

"That's not good," he scolded. "Hunting YOUR people, Steve."

He decided not to mention his sudden inability to eat. He'd rather not discuss his diet with Steve, even when it just consisted of disgusting sharks.

"I know," Steve said. "But I don't want you to die, either."

Bucky didn't have a response for that, so he folded up his arm and looked up at Steve. Steve bit his lip and looked at him, concerned.

"I have one more question," he said and Bucky nodded. "Why did you save me?"

Bucky looked down at the sand and frowned.

"I mean, you didn't know me, right?" Steve asked and Bucky shook his head, then made a face and shrugged. "Hey, wait what do you mean by that?" Steve asked and Bucky absentmindedly put the end of the pen in his mouth to chew on it and was shocked when it burst and black exploded into his face like he'd scared a squid and he spat on the ink in his mouth. Steve threw his head back and laughed and Bucky glared and spit ink at him. But then, Steve reached forward with his pretty hands and dunked the tips into the ocean water and used them to help Bucky wipe his face off. Bucky froze when Steve touched his lips, wiping, and while his hands were there, Bucky puckered his lips a little and pressed a black-inked peck to Steve's hand. Steve stopped and looked at him and then, embarrassed, he sunk back into the water to cover his face again.

When he came back up, Steve took his hand and kissed his fingers, too and Bucky offered a shy, black-toothed, smile.

He finished cleaning out his mouth with the salt water, making faces and running his tongue over his teeth, spitting ink back into the water. He flicked the tip of his tail with displeasure.

"Next time, don't chew on the pens," Steve teased and Bucky rolled his eyes. "But you were just about to explain to me what you meant. When you shrugged. You know me?

"No," Bucky wrote and the ink leaked all over the page. He scrubbed at it frustratedly with his palm, then kept going in a clean part of the pad. "I watched you before. I'd seen you before."

"You have?" Steve asked and Bucky nodded, again feeling shameful.

"While ago. I was going to sing to your ship, but saw you," Bucky wrote and stopped.

"And?" Steve prodded.

"And I didn't want to sing anymore," Bucky said. "I found another ship and ate someone there instead."

"That doesn't make sense," Steve said. "What, I'm just not appetizing?" Bucky smiled and shook his head. "So I _am_ appetizing?"

"Not what I meant!" Bucky wrote and Steve just laughed.

"I'm teasing," he said. Then, "explain more. Why didn't you want to kill me?"

Bucky looked at the pen leaking ink all over his hand and back up at Steve and frowned and then turned the pen upside down and drowned the pad in the remaining ink and before Steve could protest, he dropped the empty cartridge and turned around and swam away.


	5. Chapter Four

Chapter Four

He was not overly human-looking. He examined himself in a piece of glass a while later and prodded at his face. There was just something not right about it, he decided. In the way his nose almost sunk into his cheekbones and the way his lips were thin and pale. His skin was blueish and his eyes seemed too wide. He could spend far longer than humans could without blinking. He had long, dark hair and it's tips stopped and curled just past his shoulders. He decided he didn't really like his face and it wasn't a wonder that his sharp-toothed smile made Steve afraid.

He was hungry again sooner than he would have been had he eaten human, and it was only a few days later when he wanted to eat. He tried another shark, but he couldn't stomach it, so he caught a few smaller fish periodically to chew on. They had so many small bones that Bucky thought there was more bone than meat and he cut himself trying to dig bones out from in between his teeth. He'd have to eat something substantial soon, he thought. He couldn't live on this and he was starting to feel ill.

He'd have to catch a human and try not to imagine he was Steve while he ate him.

_I'm gonna post two chapters today in honor of the reception the story has received on this and other sites! (And bc this one is particularly short XD ) Thanks for reading!_

_-BlitheBells_


	6. Chapter Five

Chapter Five

The next day, when Bucky returned to the shore, Steve had another man with him. Bucky eyed them both from a safe distance where he couldn't be seen and then turned around and left. The next day, the same man was there and he and Steve were talking. Steve was pointing over the ocean and Bucky had an idea what he might be talking about. Today, he inched closer and closer to the shore until Steve spotted his head bobbing in the waves and started waving and pointing frantically. The man followed Steve's gaze and Bucky felt his eyes, then watched him stumble back in fear. Steve grabbed his arm; he was practically jumping up and down.

"Bucky!" He shouted over the waves to Bucky. "Come here!" Hesitantly, Bucky edged closer and closer, but he kept his distance, hiding his face under the water so only the top of his head and his eyes were visible. He wouldn't beach himself on his stomach, vulnerable, the way he did around just Steve. The man was trying to pull Steve away, but Steve was fighting him. "Bucky! Come here, see if you recognize this guy! This is Dum Dum!"

"We're gonna get _killed_!" Dum Dum was shouting at Steve and he looked at Bucky with horrified eyes.

"He won't hurt you!" Steve cried, yanking his arm out of Dum Dum's grasp and he looked to Bucky. "Right? Right, Bucky? Come closer, show him you're safe!"

Safe? Bucky thought. Hardly. But at Steve's request, he inched himself a little closer and lifted his face out of the water.

"Look!" Steve cried, pointing. "Look, it's Bucky!" Dum Dum was shaking his head, his eyes wide.

"You've lost it, Rogers," he said. "That's not… There's no way…"

"It's him!" Steve yelled and Bucky watched them go back and forth.

"He's a _fish_!" Dum Dum cried, pointing at Bucky. "He's a shark with a face and just happens to look similar enough to Barnes to torment you!"

"That's not true," Steve said and he reached down into a bag at his feet and pulled out a dry erase board and a marker. Then, he started wading through the water towards Bucky and Dum Dum cried out.

"Get back here!" He yelled, but Steve ignored him. Bucky sat up a little and looked angrily at Steve when Steve handed him the board.

"Show him you're Bucky," Steve pleaded. "Show him you're fine." Dum Dum froze, staring at Bucky and Bucky looked back and forth between Steve and Dum Dum venomously. Then, he put a corner of the board into his mouth and snapped off a chunk and spat it back out into the water spitefully. Steve gasped and Bucky took the marker and snapped it in half, letting it bleed into the waves and then he snarled at them both and dove away, slapping the water behind him with the tip of his tail. He could hear Steve splashing behind him, as though he could follow, and he didn't turn around to see Dum Dum yank Steve back.


	7. Chapter Six

Chapter Six

Bucky didn't return to the shore for a day or two and when he did, Steve was sitting there waiting for him with his head in his hands. Bucky hung back in the water, waiting for Steve to look up, and when he didn't, Bucky hissed loudly. Steve jumped and looked over and let out a frustrated breath when he saw him.

"Thanks for absolutely nothing," he said angrily and Bucky glared up steadily from the safety of the water. "You couldn't have been nice for five minutes?" Bucky only growled a little in the back of his throat.

Steve glared back and reached into his bag and pulled out the pieces of the white board and threw it at him. Bucky dodged a piece of flying marker and sunk deeper into the waves. Steve put his head back in his hands and groaned and after a minute, Bucky collected up the pieces and came up closer to the shore to set them back in the sand. He took the biggest piece of board and the marker end and tried to write, although the ink was bleeding and waterlogged.

"Don't trust," he managed to write and he scooted the board over to Steve and sunk back into the water. Steve took the board and struggled to make out the smudged writing, then looked back over at Bucky.

"They don't trust you either," he accused. "And right now, I can't blame them." Bucky dragged himself onto shore farther and reached for the board in Steve's hands and Steve sighed and gave it to him.

"Better marker," Bucky wrote.

"Well, that _was_ a brand new marker," Steve replied. "That I bought specifically for you, you dumbass."

Bucky frowned and underlined his words again and dropped the marker back into the ocean and pushed the board in Steve's face.

"Alright, alright," Steve said, batting the board away. "Fine." He dug through his bag and came up with another marker and Bucky reached for it, but Steve held it away. "First, promise you won't snap this one." Bucky nodded and reached again and again, Steve leaned away. "I said promise." Bucky frowned at him, unsure what he wanted him to do, and then decided to draw an X over his heart. His claw left white lines on his skin and he looked at Steve and raised one eyebrow. Steve sighed. "Good enough," he said and handed him the marker.

Bucky uncapped it with his teeth and spat the cap away while Steve fumbled over him to catch it and started writing on the board again.

"Don't show me off," he wrote and underlined it three times and held it up.

"Yeah, I got that," Steve grumbled.

"Called me fish," he wrote next and Steve rolled his eyes.

"Get over yourself," he said. "You have a tail and you live in the ocean. He was close enough."

"Said I was harmless," Bucky wrote next and raised his eyebrow at Steve again over the board when he turned it around and Steve looked at him.

"Well," Steve said sheepishly and shrugged and Bucky growled and snapped his jaw at him so Steve jumped. "Alright, alright, I get it, fine, you're dangerous, sure! You really got that offended over that?"

"Not offended," Bucky wrote, wiping away the rest of the writing with the heel of his palm.

"Then what?" Steve asked and Bucky shrugged.

"I'm not harmless," he wrote. "Want you to know."

"So I don't, what, let my guard down?" Steve asked and Bucky nodded. Steve rolled his eyes.

"Too late," he said. "Look, you may not be harmless, sure, but I don't think for one second that you'd hurt me-and don't you growl at me! Cut that out! Look, all I'm saying is that I put my hands literally on your mouth and you didn't bite my fingers off." Steve said, throwing his hands up. "Instead, you actually _kissed _me. Sorry if I think that says, 'no harm intended'!"

"Don't want to see anyone else," he wrote next. "Only you. Always only you."

"Why?" Steve asked and Bucky frowned and hesitated before writing.

"Scared," he finally wrote. "Vulnerable here. Don't trust them."

"Uhuh," Steve said. "And why do you trust me?" Bucky stared at him for a while and then dropped the marker and board onto the sand and started to push himself away, keeping his steady and unnerving eye contact. "Hey!" Steve cried and grabbed his wrist. "Did you seriously just decide you don't trust me?" Bucky looked from his hand on his wrist to his face and shook his head no slowly. "Then what?" Reluctantly, he took up the board again and wrote, "don't know why I trust you. I like you. Don't know why." He looked at Steve and watched Steve's face change as he read the words. He turned the board around again and added, "I don't know why and I'm scared."

"Scared?" Steve asked. "What of?" Bucky looked at him and then gestured around them. He wiped the words off with his hand and started again.

"Life is just kill and eat and kill and eat," he wrote. "This is different. New. Don't know why it's happening to me."

Steve looked at him and nodded a little.

"I understand," he said and Bucky pushed the board back onto the sand again and slipped himself into the water, hanging back a little. "Are you leaving?" Steve asked and Bucky nodded. "Alright," he said. "Well, come here for a second." Cautiously and curiously, Bucky pulled himself back up for the third time and Steve leaned in and pressed a kiss to his wet forehead. Bucky thought his heart might burst and excitement danced with the fear under his skin. "There," Steve said. "Now you can go." Bucky looked up at him and held his gaze for a minute and then dove back under the waves and swam away.


	8. Chapter Seven

Chapter Seven

Dead and sunken ships littered the bottom of the ocean in certain rough patches, where rocks and angry waves carried them down. Bucky didn't usually explore them. He'd never had a reason to and human things bored him, but now he went from ship to ship, ripping the doors off the hinges and turning the looted shells inside out in a search. When he found something shiny, he'd take it with him, sling it around his neck or tie it to his wrists and when he finished, he had a nice collection of gold and silver chains and necklaces and rings and gems. The next day, he brought it with him to the shore and pulled himself up beside Steve. Steve looked over and gasped as he unloaded everything in front of him a wet heap.

"Bucky," Steve breathed and he leaned over and sifted through the pile with his fingers. "What is this?"

The board and marker were sitting on the sand waiting for him and Bucky snatched it up.

"Presents," Bucky wrote and Steve blinked at him. He looked back down at the pile in the sand and held up one golden necklace.

"Is this real?" He asked and Bucky shrugged.

"It's shiny," he wrote and Steve cracked a smile.

"Where did you get all this?" He said.

"Sunken ships," Bucky wrote and flashed a toothy grin.

"Wow," Steve said. "And you collected all this for me?"

"Yes," Bucky wrote and nodded emphatically. "Like?"

"I do, yeah," Steve said. "I do like it, thank you." He looked at Bucky. "I don't have anything for you."

Bucky shrugged nonchalantly, but then Steve went on. "Well, I suppose maybe I do, now that I think about it. I've got something of a proposition." Bucky looked at him and cocked his head questioningly. Steve shifted and scooted closer to Bucky. "See, I was thinking, maybe you ought to come back with me." Bucky stared for a second and blinked at him. Steve swallowed and rubbed his hands over his hair. "The town's only a mile or so away. I'm not sure how we'd do it yet, but we could fit my house with, I dunno, a swimming pool or something. You could stay with me." Bucky drew back a little and made a face. Steve studied his expression and his chest deflated. "You don't want to," he said and Bucky frowned. He picked up the board.

"Food?" He wrote and let that say it all.

What would you feed me, Steve? How would you do it? Toss me a few carcasses and turn around? If you could do even that.

Steve seemed to understand what he meant and he paled a little.

"Could you try maybe not eating people?" He asked quietly and Bucky glared. He again did not mention his diet switch, one of which he was hoping would be impermanent. He turned the board back around and wrote again.

"Not pet," he said.

"I didn't mean to say that you were," Steve backpedaled and Bucky frowned.

"Half-baked plan," he accused and Steve pursed his lips.

"You don't have to be rude," he said.

"Why want me anyway," Bucky wrote and Steve looked down and shrugged a little.

"Just thought it'd be nice," he said. "Having you closer. I didn't want to keep you as a pet, geez Buck, I just… Wanted you near to me."

Bucky didn't quite know what to think and he looked Steve up and down. He picked up his board and wrote again.

"Can't keep thing like me in pool," he wrote and Steve nodded wearily.

"I know," he said. "I just don't know what else to do."

Bucky set the board down in the sand next to the pile of gold and looked up at Steve. Steve looked over at him and let out a breath.

"What?" He said and now, Bucky reached forward and grabbed at the sand and pulled himself up further, continuing to drag himself until he could turn himself around and sit on the beach right next to Steve. He felt disgustingly dry. He brushed the sand off his torso and the front of his tail and offered Steve a grin and Steve shook his head and laughed. There, he thought. Near to you.

Bucky was enjoying Steve's laugh and leaning back on his hand when he felt a sharp, excruciating pain in his tail and then another in his left shoulder blade and he opened his mouth and let out a high-pitched screech. Steve looked over, stunned, and Bucky could see blood pooling out of a small hole on the side of his tail and he panicked. He flopped over ungracefully and cried out in pain and started trying to claw his way back to the water. Steve clamoured to his feet and leaned down and grabbed Bucky's arm and started pulling.

"Go!" He screamed as soon as Bucky was far enough in the water to be free. "Go, Bucky, go!"

Bucky pumped his tail and swam at record speed through the water, leaving a red trail behind him. He went as far as he could before the pain was too much and he found a small, underwater cave to hide in. He looked at the hole in his tail, wincing with the pain, and prodded it. Fire shot through him and every scale lit up with pain. There was something in the hole, something small and metal and covered in blood and Bucky sucked in a gulp of water and held it and then began digging into the hole with his claws to get the metal out. He screeched again into the water and was left panting when his bloodied fingers finally found and extricated the bullet. He held it up to his face and realized there must be something similar in his back and he leaned his head against a rock wall behind him and let out inhuman moans of pain. The bullet fell from his fingers and sank down to the sandy floor. He clawed at his back, but was unable to reach the hole with his hands. He didn't know how to bandage his wounds. He didn't know how to avoid bleeding out, how to keep other fish from smelling the blood and following him here. It was getting dark and Bucky didn't know what to do but try to find Steve again.

He swam back to the shore as the sun set to find it empty. He watched weakly from a ways away and then pulled himself back up onto the sand, under the shady ridge he and Steve had sat before. He hoped Steve would come back for him and he lay on the sand and pressed his face into the crook of his arm, trying not to focus on the pain.

He moaned his pitiful version of Steve's name and shuddered.


	9. Chapter Eight

Chapter Eight

A few hours later, Bucky was still lying alone on the sand. He stared up at the sky and blinked slowly, tiredly. He couldn't really feel the pain anymore. He was fading in and out of consciousness.

Then, in between his black spells, he saw Steve's face above his own and he made a weak grumbling in the back of his throat and tried to reach up with his hand and then went black again. He felt Steve's hands on his tail, pulling something around the wound over and over and over. He heard Steve beg him to sit up, felt his hands on his arm and his yanking and Bucky tried dizzily to sit and ended up slumping over his tail. Steve's lips were on his head and his cheek and his neck near his gills and he blinked, trying to remember where he was. Then, there was white hot pain in his left shoulder, even more intense than before and Bucky jumped, screeched, spasmed.

"I have to get it out Bucky, I have to get it out!" Steve was saying and after a few minutes, the pain settled and Steve was wrapping something else around his torso, under his arm, again and again and again. Bucky slumped against Steve and whimpered and Steve wrapped his arms around him.

"I'm so sorry," he said. "Shh, it's okay, you can rest now. I'm so, so sorry."

Bucky remembered more hands on him and the feeling of being dragged, feeling grains of sand scrape against his scales, and then he didn't remember anything else.

When he woke, he wasn't in the ocean or on the beach and he froze, panicked. He looked around him, trying to figure out what was happening. He was lying down, on something like a human bed, he thought, and he was stretched across it at an angle and even then, his tail hung uncomfortably off the end. He looked down at himself and saw strips of white tied around his tail and his chest and he was surrounded by… Towels? Bucky picked one up off his tail to find it cold and dripping wet. They were everywhere.

He didn't know where he was. He didn't know why he wasn't dead. There was no water anywhere, no where he could go, and he was stuck with one arm and a tail on dry land until someone helped him. He shuddered, sending waves of pain through the bullet wound in his shoulder, and then started to cry out. He didn't know who might answer him, but he prayed it would be Steve.

And luckily, it _was_ Steve who burst through the door at the first sound of his awakening, looking relieved to see him. Bucky started to try and pull himself up and Steve ran over to his side.

"No, stop, don't strain yourself," he instructed and put his hands on Bucky's shoulders and gently pushed him back down. Bucky looked up at him and whimpered again, frightened. "I know, I know," Steve said. "But it's okay; you're with me and no one's gonna hurt you again, alright?"

Bucky looked around the room for his pen and board and looked desperately at Steve, mimicking writing in the air with his hand and Steve grabbed a pad of paper and pencil off the bedside table and handed it to him. He braced the pad against his wet tail and wrote.

"I'm afraid!" He scrawled. "It hurts! What happened!"

"People from behind us," Steve said. "Up on the ridge. They saw you when you sat up on the shore and thought they'd be saving me if they killed you."

Still distressed, Bucky covered his face with his hand and whined.

"But it's okay now," Steve tried to say. "I patched you up and no one else knows about you but me. You're completely safe."

Bucky took the pencil and wrote again.

"I don't want to be here," he wrote. "Want to go back."

"You have to rest for a while," Steve told him and he shook his head, blinking away panicked tears. He underlined his words again and tore the paper off the top of the pad and flung it at Steve. "I know, I get it!" Steve said, dodging the balled up paper. "But this will just be better for you, alright?"

"No water," Bucky wrote with his shaking hand on the next sheet of paper. "No food."

"I'll take care of you!" Steve cried and Bucky just shook his head fiercely. Steve's shoulders slumped. "Look, I know this isn't ideal and I know you're afraid, but… But if I let you go, you could die. These are bad wounds, Bucky, and you're the one who told me that if you can't hunt or fight, that's it." Bucky looked at him with watering eyes. "I'm protecting you," Steve said weakly.

Then, Bucky's stomach grumbled loudly and Bucky threw his arm over his face and moaned.


	10. Chapter Nine

Chapter Nine

Steve helped Bucky sit up and rushed out of the room and when he came back, he was carrying a box. Bucky sniffed and made a face, smelling long-dead fish, and Steve dropped the box on the floor next to Bucky's bed.

"I don't have anything else to give you," he admitted. "I got this at the market cheap." Bucky took his pencil up.

"Cheap because it's rotting, Steve," he wrote and Steve ran both his hands over his hair again and let out a heavy breath.

"What else do you want?" Steve asked, looking as though he was bracing himself for Bucky to demand human flesh, but Bucky just looked down from Steve's face to the box of fish and imitated Steve's heavy sigh. He didn't respond on paper and instead, reached down into the box and pulled out a fish, skewering it on the tip of his claws. He made a face and sniffed it and felt his stomach revolt, but he pushed back the bile and closed his eyes and forced himself to take a bite.

"Uh, you don't want that cut up or, um, cooked or…," Steve offered weakly and the only response was the squishing and crunching sounds the dead fish made in Bucky's mouth. Steve turned a little green and started inching for the door, and he would have made it out had Bucky not dropped the fish and leaned over the bed and started vomiting on the floor.

Steve ran back over and Bucky was still hacking and coughing. He wiped his bloody fingers off on Steve's bed and then vomited again violently.

"I-It was that bad?" Steve asked. "They said they were only a day old and I thought…"

Bucky took the pencil up shakily, smearing fish gore all over the paper as he wrote.

"Not supposed to eat fish," he wrote and then he felt bile rise in his throat again and covered his mouth, forcing himself to choke it down and started writing again. "Supposed to eat humans."

"Well, I can't get you humans!" Steve cried, but Bucky wasn't finished writing.

"Haven't killed and eaten a human in a long time, Steve. Since just before I met you," he finished and pushed the pad to Steve. Steve picked it up and read it and his mouth opened in surprise. He looked over at Bucky and Bucky reached for the paper back. "I've been eating fish. It's making me sick." Steve took the paper slowly and after he read it, he looked back up at Bucky, his mouth open in surprise.

"What?" He breathed. "Really?" Bucky nodded. "Why?" Bucky looked down at the paper and wrote again.

"Couldn't anymore. Kept seeing your face and I-" Bucky stopped and the pencil traveled down the paper in a shaky, directionless scribble. He swallowed and tried again. "-couldn't force myself."

"Really?" Steve cried and he sounded angry. Bucky hadn't expected him to be angry. "So it's my fault you're starving yourself to death."

"Not starving to death," Bucky wrote, although that was, admittedly, a lie. "Just-" he stopped writing.

"Just, what?" Steve said and Bucky shrugged. "Yeah, uhuh, great," Steve said sharply and Bucky watched him lean backwards and press his lips together and run his hands over his hair.

"You should be glad," Bucky wrote. "Shouldn't you?"

"That you're making yourself sick?" Steve retorted and Bucky glared at him.

"That I'm not killing your people," he wrote and shoved the paper in Steve's face. Steve batted him away frustratedly and Bucky took the paper back and wrote more. "Human life is more important," he scrawled. "Isn't that what all you people think?"

"Is that what you think?" Steve asked and Bucky wasn't exactly sure. He hesitated before writing.

"I'm just-," he wrote and stopped and fiercely scribbled it out. Under it, he wrote, "it doesn't matter."

"It does matter," Steve said. He was looking at Bucky with those hard eyes, like Bucky had said something very wrong. Bucky looked up at him and back down at the paper.

"I'll keep eating fish," he wrote after a silent minute of Steve's staring.

He didn't like the other things like him, the other _sirens_, Steve called them. He wouldn't care if they all starved to death. They seemed evil, and heartless. He didn't want to be like them. At least, not anymore.

A few minutes passed in quiet and Bucky held up his pad again. "Am I evil?" He wrote in letters so small Steve had to squint to see them. His eyes traveled back from the paper up to Bucky's face.

"What?" He breathed.

"You," Bucky wrote. "Are good. You are perfect. But I kill you. I'm the opposite. So am I bad?"

"I, uh," Steve sputtered. "I-it doesn't work like that, Buck."

Bucky only dropped his head back onto his pillow.

"Well, come on now Bucky, what else were you supposed to do? Starve?" Steve exclaimed.  
Bucky glanced over at Steve tiredly and Steve swallowed.  
"Oh," he said. "Yeah. Cause, uh, that's what you're doing now."

Duh, Bucky thought.

"So is that what this is?" Steve asked. "You're trying to make it better somehow, trying to make up for it by not eating people?"

Bucky shrugged.

"What else are you supposed to do?" Steve said and Bucky shrugged again desperately. "Well we'd better figure out soon," Steve continued. "Before you vomit all over my carpet again."


	11. Chapter Ten

Chapter Ten

That night, after a fierce scrub of the carpet, Steve dragged a sleeping bag into the room and Bucky watched him from where he still lay, half propped up on the bed. He watched Steve roll it out next to the bed and Bucky couldn't help but feel a little crestfallen. He'd thought, well… Well, he _was_ in Steve's bed, after all, and he'd sort of thought maybe Steve would be in Steve's bed, too. Ideally.

He made a noise, a whine, if at least to get Steve's attention, and he looked up and raised an eyebrow, standing straight.

"What?" He said and Bucky pointed at the sleeping bag. "You're in my bed," Steve said as he tugged a pillow off the mattress beside Bucky and tossed it to the carpet. "I don't really have anywhere else to go."

Bucky looked down at the ground and back up at Steve and then glanced at the mattress under him pointedly.

"What are you trying to say?" Steve asked exhaustedly and in response, Bucky scooted over a little as best he could and patted the mattress next to him. "You want me to sleep with you?" Steve said and Bucky made a face and then scooted himself back indignantly.

Fine, he thought. Be that way.

Steve stood there for a minute, considering.

"It's sort of wet," he finally said and Bucky grinned and nodded. Steve laughed. "Yeah, I know that's what _you'd_ want, but I'm not a siren."

Bucky, sensing that Steve might be breaking down, patted the spot next to him again innocently and, with a sigh, Steve climbed up and joined him.

"Alright, fine," he gave in. "But just because you're hogging all my pillows and I don't have any other place yet."

Steve was warm next to him, hot like humans always were, with their warm blood and skin. Steve closed his eyes and Bucky watched him, scooting ever so slightly closer, and then nuzzling his face into Steve's shoulder. Steve opened one eye and looked over at him. He chuckled a little, but said nothing and Bucky felt him lift his arm and sling it around Bucky's shoulders, dragging him nearer and cuddling him although Steve was by far the smaller one. Bucky became stiff, holding his breath, unable to believe this was happening to him. A few seconds later, he relaxed a little into Steve's embrace and couldn't stop a smile. He pressed his cheek gently on Steve's chest, curling up as best he could around him, and Steve reached over and stroked some of his hair back.

"You must have been very lonely," Bucky heard him whisper and he wasn't sure if he was or not, but something about the idea made his heart hurt, and he squeezed himself closer to Steve and stopped thinking about it.


	12. Chapter Eleven

Chapter Eleven

In the morning, Bucky was homesick. Steve called him a drama queen at least six times, but Bucky still covered his face with pillows or the crook of his arm and wailed whenever the ocean was mentioned even obscurely.

"You'll be back soon enough!" Steve cried. "You don't have to stand it here much longer, just until you're better!"

He did, however, notice something familiar on the top of Steve's dresser, and upon further examination and whining inquiry, he was told that it was in fact a display of Bucky's presents. In a glass frame, Steve had mounted the gems and jewelry nicely and underneath it was another, smaller picture frame. Steve brought this one to him, handed it to him, and Bucky stared at the face behind the glass.

"That was you," Steve said. "When you were, uh, human."

Bucky stared at the square-toothed grin and the short, cropped hair and the human-esque features and something in him felt a little sad. It did look like him, minus the siren features and tail.

"You still don't remember it?" Steve asked and Bucky shook his head. He set the photo down and picked up his notebook.

"What if you found out I wasn't him?" Bucky asked. "What would you do?" He showed Steve the paper and Steve frowned. He didn't answer. Bucky felt a wave of fear roll through him. "Would you leave me?" He asked. "If I wasn't really Bucky?"

Steve read his words and looked up at his face mournfully.

"It's okay if you say yes," Bucky wrote, even though it wasn't okay, and Steve sighed.

"I wouldn't leave you," he said.

"Really?" Bucky said.

"Yeah," Steve said. "I'd keep taking care of you. I'd keep loving you." Bucky froze.

"You love me?" He wrote and pushed the notebook over to Steve and Steve took it up. Bucky waited a long time for a reply and when Steve finally moved again, it wasn't to talk. He stood up from where he was sitting next to Bucky and set his notebook down and gave him a kiss on the head and left the room and Bucky leaned over his tail and buried his face in the wet sheets and squeezed his eyes shut.

I love you, he thought weakly.


	13. Chapter Twelve

Chapter Twelve

A few days passed this way. Steve had a bathtub and although it was far too small for Bucky, he was allowed to cram himself into it for as long as he could each day, filling up the water until it practically overflowed and sinking down until his entire head was submerged, half his tail sticking straight up out of the other end. More often than not, he spilled on the floor and Steve would make a dissatisfied face while he laid towels down.

Then, when Bucky began to feel his tail cramping or his wounds throbbing, he'd drain the water and wait for it to sink down sadly into the tiny hole in the bottom and cry for Steve to help drag him out. He often felt the need to remind Steve that he was usually very self-sufficient and he was a great swimmer and he never needed help in the water and Steve would just nod while he wrapped his arms around Bucky's torso and gave another heave.

"I know, Bucky," he'd say over and over again as Bucky humiliatingly had to accept his help, dragging him through the house like a great, beached weight. "I know."

His watery left replacement never appeared in the tub water. The first time he'd been so sure it would happen and when it didn't, he plunged his head down into the water to hide his tears of bitter disappointment from Steve.

Steve rolled a TV into the room on a cart one day and handed Bucky the remote and told him that it was for entertainment and he could watch whatever he wanted. Bucky quickly became hooked, even though he was rarely entirely sure what he was watching, and sometimes, Steve would sit in with him and watch too. Bucky made a point of laughing at the screen whenever Steve did, even though his laugh sounded more like a gargle. He had to admit that while he missed the ocean with everything he had, ached for it's comfort and self-reliance and familiarity, he was happy to be spending so much time with Steve. In a strange way, it was a dream come true.

Unfortunately, Bucky was becoming progressively sicker and sicker. Living on a box of days old fish was clearly not good for a siren's system. Steve didn't say anything, but Bucky's ribs were beginning to show one by one and he often had to be forced to eat something, anything, with Steve standing over him and begging him to take another bite. Bucky noticed Steve staring at him worriedly sometimes but he just didn't know what else to do. He realized he'd probably die before he could eat what he ought to.

Sometimes, when his stomach rumbled, he couldn't help but daydream for a few minutes about the way a fresh catch tasted. But when his mouth started to water, he'd force himself to stop and chide himself for thinking about something he shouldn't want.

One day, during a binge watching session of something Bucky didn't entirely understand, Steve took the remote from Bucky's hand and turned the TV off and Bucky looked over to him, confused.

"I have something to tell you," Steve started. "And it probably won't make you very happy."

Bucky began to brace himself for several things, including things from the spectrum of, "I've decided you aren't Bucky and I don't love you and I want you out" to "the water to my house was shut off".

"I've got some guys coming over tomorrow," he admitted. "People you used to know."

Bucky scrambled for his paper.

"No!" He wrote emphatically.

"I'm not finished!" Steve said. "Look, they're good guys, okay? I won't let them do anything to you. They just want to see you."

"Steve," Bucky wrote and looked up at him, pulling his thoughts together desperately. "I'm already pitiful enough. Please don't make me a zoo animal."

"I'm not!" Steve protested. "Don't misconstrue this, it's just a meeting is all."

"I used to have pride, you know," Bucky wrote. "Before I had to be dragged through the halls of a human's house by my armpits and force-fed dead fish." He crumbled up the paper and threw it at Steve so Steve had to unwrap it to read it.

"We're not having this conversation again," Steve said sternly once he'd unfolded the paper ball. "Pride comes second, Buck, I'm trying to keep you _alive_. A thank you would be nice."

"Tell them no," Bucky said adamantly and threw that one, too.

"Would you quit it?" Steve cried frustratedly. "You're making this hard!"

Bucky was then seized again with the fear that Steve might not love him and he put his pencil down. He didn't crumble any more papers.

"Thank you," Steve said and glowered. "Now are you gonna let me talk?" Bucky nodded. He longed for the days when he could turn around and swim away whenever Steve said something he didn't like. He longed for the days when he could swim at all.

He really had been laid low.

"It's just five other guys, guys who _know you_," Steve said. "They'll just be here for a couple hours for a beer and to say hello. Now does that sound so bad?"

I don't want it, Bucky thought, but he dare not say any more.

The next day, when the guys were over, Bucky could hear them all in the front room. His stomach twisted with fear. He'd wasted no more time begging Steve, who seemed dead set that his friends be convinced about Bucky's goodness, and instead had begun worrying. He ate nothing all day.

He could hear them all talking, could hear loud laughter and conversation, and slunk further down into his wet sheets fearfully.

"So you'd better tell us this story, Rogers," he heard someone shout loudly over the din. "How does somebody end up playing nursemaid to a sea monster?"

"First off, it's not like that," Steve said. "And second off, he got hurt. So I took him home to keep him safe."

"Has he told you how many people he's eaten?" Someone else asked and Bucky felt shame wash over him. He closed his eyes.

"Well, I'm sure he doesn't remember every single, uh… Meal," Steve said and someone snorted loudly. "But he doesn't actually eat people anymore. He eats fish."

"He's a vegetarian siren?" A voice answered and laughed filled the room. Bucky wished with all his heart that he could disappear.

"He's actually worried about being evil," Steve said once the laughter died down. "He doesn't want to be bad."

"Since when do sea monsters worry about being evil? Does he think he's gonna go to hell?" Came the response.

"Shut up you idiot, sea monsters don't know about hell," someone else replied.

"He just wants to be good, that's all," Steve said. "I think he's just remembering the difference between right and wrong, is all."

"You _kidnapped_ a siren," Bucky heard someone exclaim. "And then you gave him an existential crisis. Steve Rogers, you're unreal." Again, more laughter.

"He's not a siren," Steve said. "He's Bucky." And something about those words scared Bucky, made him feel sick to his stomach.

I am, he thought. I am a siren. I'm sorry that's a bad thing. I wish I could be human because you so obviously want me to be. But I can't just get myself legs. I'm not magic.

I don't want to be inherently bad, Steve. I don't want to be, but I am.

"Now look," Steve said, drawing Bucky out of his thoughts. His voice was closer now, he was by the door. Bucky felt his stomach turn again. "He's not really been feeling well lately, and he's sort of scared, so please be sensitive."

"Yeah, guys," someone said mockingly. "Don't hurt the siren's feelings."

"I mean it," Steve said and Bucky closed his eyes and wished he was back in the ocean. I begged you, Steve, he thought heartbrokenly. I begged you.

When the men flooded in, four or five sailor friends of Steve's, the room fell silent and Bucky felt eyes on him. It was dead silent for an uncomfortably long time and the men had grown sober, keeping as far away from Bucky as possible, pushing themselves up against the back walls and staring. Bucky held completely still.

When Bucky moved, a few of the men cried out in surprise.

Bucky took his pad of paper off the table and scrawled on it and held it up.

"Hi," he wrote.

There was another uncomfortable silence.

"Hi," someone responded and then Bucky watched the speaker get elbowed in the ribs and told to shut up. He looked down at his pad of paper and sighed. He wrote again.

"If you're done staring at me, maybe you can move along now," he wrote. "You can find my pride somewhere at the other end of a bathtub drain."

Steve went red and a few of the men snickered.

"You didn't say he had snark," one of the men commented.

"I told you he was Bucky, didn't I?" Steve retorted.

"Hey, Rogers, are you feedin' this thing?" One of them asked. "He looks like he's about to keel over."

"Maybe it's feeding time now and that's why he invited us over," another man said, drawing some awkward laughter.

"You're hilarious," Bucky wrote and stared at them all dryly. 'Feeding time'? They really did think he was some sort of display animal. He threw a look over at Steve, but Steve wasn't watching.

"Can we not talk about food right now," Steve said.

"Can we touch him?" Someone said quietly and now Steve turned over and looked at Bucky.

"It's up to him," he said and Bucky wrote quickly.

"Sure," he scrawled. "Touch the tip of my tail." He held the paper up and turned it around and grinned toothily over the top of the notepad, flicking the end of his barbed tail out of the sheets.

"Don't!" Steve cried, jumping. "Don't do that. Look, uh, I think we're about done here, you guys aren't gonna ask me any more questions about him now, right? We should go get something to drink."

The guys followed Steve out and Bucky relaxed back onto his pillows, setting his paper down on the table next to him and letting out a breath.

That was a nightmare. But at least none of them had hurt him.


	14. Chapter Thirteen

Chapter Thirteen

"You know," a voice said once everyone was gone and Bucky looked over, startled, to realize one man was still in the room. "We know what you done." He was leaning against a wall in the shadows, glaring at Bucky. Bucky stared back and felt suddenly threatened by the low growl of this man's voice. "You sang to him," the man said. "Didn't you."

Bucky shook his head. He wanted this man gone. He felt all the bravado and the snark drain out of him now because suddenly, this wasn't the loud laughing, uncomfortable men and Steve. Suddenly, he was alone and he was scared of this guy, he realized. This was weird. This was scary. This wasn't like earlier.

Beached as he was, Bucky would have a hard time fighting if the man tried anything. And the glint in his eye told Bucky he might be considering trying something. Bucky shook his head again slowly.

"Don't lie to me, fish," the man spat and he stood up off the wall and started making his way closer to Bucky. Bucky pressed himself back into the backboard of Steve's bed and he didn't mean to, but he let a small whimper slip out of his mouth. "We know you did it. Pulled him out of the water and then hypnotized him so good he doesn't even know what he's doing anymore." Bucky shook his head for a third time, more violently. He would never sing to Steve. He couldn't.

"You're not Barnes," the man said. "Because that's stupid. And people don't just come back from the dead and become sea creatures. You're just another damn sea monster, just like all the rest, and you'd kill him just for fun, wouldn't you? When you're done playing with his mind."

Bucky didn't know what to do. He considered his options. He could scream for Steve, but he didn't think Steve was still in the house. He could try to fight the man off, if he attacked, but he was ungraceful on land, and unused to fighting with one arm. The poison at the fan tip of his tail was mostly useless out of water, too, unless Bucky could hit him with it directly. Then, he had another thought.

He could sing.

Bucky wasn't sure what to do with this idea. It was a thought, certainly, but he realized he was against it because he was worried that Steve might be angry with him if he hypnotized this man. Steve might not understand. And to make it worse, he just didn't want to. He didn't want to be like the sirens. He didn't want to be evil. He didn't want to.

So instead, Bucky reached over to the table where he had left his paper and pencils and took some up to try and explain himself to the man, but as he started to write, the man leapt forward and knocked it out of his hand. He watched his voice fall right out of his lap and onto the floor. He felt another surge of fear.

"I don't care to hear what you have to say," the man said. "Whatever lies you'd try and feed me. You don't _get_ to talk right now."

Bucky was trying to reach down to the floor, but he didn't have another hand to brace himself and he could feel himself starting to fall. He looked up,wide eyed at the man and then the man reached forward and put his hands on him and slung him roughly down. Bucky hit the ground on his shoulder and tail hard and pain exploded up from his still healing gunshot wounds. He made a pitiful, pained squeal. The rest of his tail followed and thudded to the ground.

"If people come back from the dead as _fish_," the man said, venomously. "Then where's my sister, eh?" The man put one foot on either side of Bucky's tail and leaned down, sneering at him. Bucky stared up, horrified. He had no idea what he was talking about. "My little sister drowned at the beach when she was three," the man said. "Is _she_ a bloody, singing monster like you are?" Bucky was frozen with fear. "With fangs for teeth? Killin' people?" Bucky started trying to scooch himself away, pulling himself up on his elbow, but the man picked up his foot and drove it into Bucky's shoulder, forcing him back down. Bucky's hiss of pain dissolved into a weak whimper. "People don't come back like you," he whispered down at Bucky. "How dare you brainwash Rogers into thinkin' you're his mate. How dare you tell him you're worth somethin', that you should be treated like a human. _Pampered._ You're monsters, animals, killers, and you aren't Barnes." Bucky's view of the man standing over him became blurred as his eyes filled with tears. He was still making quiet, horrified sounds in the back of his throat. Then, the man backed up a little and lifted his foot, standing over Bucky's tail. Bucky looked him up and down, blinking hard, and then the man drove the heel of his boot right into the bullet wound in Bucky's tail. Bucky screeched. Where was Steve? Where was Steve?!

"You!" The man cried and he picked up his foot again and brought it back down, accenting each of his words with a kick. "Aren't! A! Person!" He ground his foot now back and forth and Bucky felt the grips in his boot tearing up his beautiful scales. He wailed in agony. Then, the man leaned over him again, right up in his face. "My sister isn't a monster like you," he hissed. "People don't come back from the dead as _sea monsters_." Bucky watched through the spots of white in his vision as the man reached behind him and brought out a switchknife. "I'm gonna stop you from ever singing again," he said. "You're not gonna fool Rogers and you aren't gonna fool me."

He was going to die. He was going to die! Bucky felt awash with panic and the man was bringing the knife down on his neck and Bucky did the only thing he knew how to do.

Through the notes of a sobbed siren song, Bucky watched the man stand rigidly and step back. Bucky tried to breathe, and set himself up shakily on his elbow. The man's eyes were glazed and he was staring at Bucky blankly, disorientedly obeying his sung suggestions. Bucky asked him to back himself up into the corner and then, just for good measure, he told the man to hold his own knife up to his throat as a precaution and he did.

Where was Steve? Bucky lifted his shoulder and wiped his tear-streaked cheek on it and kept singing. Hadn't Steve heard him screaming? They sat there for what felt like a long time with Bucky sustaining his song, and then he heard doors open, voices. Then, the door to the bedroom opened and Bucky broke off his song immediately, afraid of having it reach Steve, but Steve was already there, surrounded by the rest of the men, staring.

There was a long silence as the man in the corner dropped his knife and collapsed into a trembling puddle on the floor. "He nearly killed me," the man was blubbering. "He was gonna eat me! You're sea monster pet nearly ate me!" The men, including Steve, looked from the sobbing man and back again to Bucky, lying on the ground. Bucky searched Steve's face desperately and found it looking betrayed.

"Bucky," Steve said quietly and Bucky started shaking his head, slowly, and then faster. "You were singing," Steve said. "We heard you singing." Bucky looked over at the man on the floor and back to Steve and his eyes started to water. "Why would you do that," Steve breathed. Bucky looked down at his tail, where red was soaking his bandage and his scales were torn into bloody shreds, and back at Steve. Look, he thought. Look, he was hurting me. He was hurting me!

The men grabbed their friend off the floor and started ushering him to the door as he screamed about Bucky being a monster and they weren't able to stop him from grabbing Steve violently by the lapels and shaking him and yelling, "kill that thing!" Steve tore himself out of the man's grasp and the others led him out and then Steve and Bucky were alone.

Bucky tried to say Steve's name.

"Ssssssssss-ee-eeeeee," he said and Steve's shoulders fell. He looked away. Bucky tried again. "Ssssssss! Eeeeee! Eeeee!"

"Stop!" Steve cried and Bucky fell silent. They stood there for a minute while Steve refused to meet Bucky's eyes and then Bucky scrambled on the floor for his lost paper and pencil.

"He was yelling at me," he wrote shakily. "He was hurting me." He tried to hold the pad up to Steve and Steve wasn't looking.

"SSSsssssssss," Bucky said quietly and he put the paper on the floor and pushed it over to Steve. It slid across the carpet and came to a stop halfway between them.

Steve, please read it, he thought desperately. Please listen to me. Please.

"I said stop!" Steve yelled and Bucky fell quiet again. Tears were starting to stream down his face, even though he'd only managed to stop a few minutes ago. "I can't do this right now," Steve said finally and he was biting his lip and Bucky watched him smooth his hair back, that familiar gesture. He was blinking hard now. He was crying, too.

Please, Steve, Bucky thought.

"I'm gonna go check on Harry," Steve said and turned around. "You'd better pray you didn't hurt him." Bucky let out a wail, a sob, and Steve turned back around. "What?" He cried. "What could you possibly expect me to do right now?" Bucky pointed frantically at the paper on the ground and then at the spot on his tail where scales were falling out and bleeding and Steve followed his gaze and his eyes widened. His mouth dropped open. He stepped forward slightly and then picked up Bucky's paper, reading it quickly. When he looked back up, Bucky had a handful of his own scales in his palm, looking at them and shaking and then he dropped the bloody mess back onto the carpet and covered his eyes with the back of his hand and moaned sickly. Steve seemed rooted into place for a moment, but he wrenched himself out and ran to Bucky, collapsing next to him.

"Harry did this to you?" Steve asked and Bucky nodded. Steve looked at him for a moment and then wrapped him up in his arms. Bucky pressed his face into Steve's shirt and shuddered. A few seconds later, Bucky felt Steve pressing something into his palm and he looked over to see his notepad and pencil. "Tell me what happened," Steve said quietly. "Tell me what he did."

And with a shaking hand, Bucky wrote everything down, from what Harry said to the way he dug the heel of his boot into Bucky's wounds to the way he promised that Bucky would never sing again. In the meantime, Steve fed Bucky pain medicines and gingerly cleaned up his wound and Bucky sobbed again to watch handful after handful of ruined scales fall into the garbage, scooped up off the floor and dug out of his flesh where they were sticking up and jutting out painfully. Steve was gentle with him, taking up the gauze and patting wet towels onto the raw areas of his tail and when he was done, Bucky saw a patch of red, raw, scale-less flesh bigger than his outstretched hand around a barely healing bullet wound. He handed Steve his paper, his finished story, and stared at the patch. It would scar and scab over. He'd never have scales there again. It would be a big, obvious, hideous reminder. And while the rest of his tail glinted in the light and shone a rainbow of colors, that giant patch didn't. It was ugly and painful and he couldn't tear his watering eyes away.

Steve cupped his hand over his mouth while he read, horrified. He kept looking up at Bucky, like he couldn't believe what had happened, and when he finished, he handed Bucky the pad again and rose, looking furious.

"You're never gonna see him again," he told Bucky. "You'll never have to deal with him again, I promise you, never."

"I don't want to see anyone else but you," Bucky wrote, like he had before, when he'd tried to tell Steve. "Only you. Always only you, please." And he'd underlined the word please, made it desperate, made it a plea. Steve swallowed and nodded.

"Alright," he said. "I can't argue anymore. Always only me." Then, Steve turned to leave, presumably to confront Harry, but Bucky cried out, a strangled sound, and reached out for him. "Staystaystaystaystaystay," he wrote again and again on his notebook. "Staystaystay-"

"Okay, I'll stay," Steve said and he crouched down and put his hand over Bucky's, halting his frantic scrawling. "I'll stay."


	15. Chapter Fourteen

Chapter Fourteen

Getting Bucky back up on the bed wasn't easy. He had to weigh at least two hundred and fifty pounds, Steve had mused, especially because his tail was so big, and Steve had no hope of picking him up in his arms. Earlier they'd just dragged him, but his wounds had gotten so much worse since then, Steve was scared of hurting him more. So Bucky clung to Steve on the floor and Steve surrounded him in sopping wet towels and fluffed pillows and held him. Occasionally, Bucky would reach out and gingerly prod the painful, scale-less spot on his tail and moan and hide his face and Steve would have to coax him out and convince him he'd be fine.

He took up his paper.

"I'm gonna die here," he wrote.

"What?" Steve said. "That's absurd."

"I'm gonna die here," Bucky wrote again. "Miserable and starving."

"That's not true," Steve said weakly.

Bucky rested his head in the crook of Steve's neck.

"Please take me back," he wrote and dropped his pencil.

The next day, Steve laid Bucky out in the bed of his truck and drove him back to the beach. He helped him out onto the sand and into the water and Bucky dove in and swam away.

Getting back into the water was the best feeling Bucky had felt in a really long time. Suddenly, he was able to breathe water again and he was able to move himself again. The water on his tail was so much better than moist towels and better yet, the second he'd touched the water, his left hand had come back to him in a spree of bubbles and twirling water. He relished the use of two arms. He'd almost forgotten what it felt like to not be a giant, thumping weight and instead feel graceful and in place. It felt good, despite the pain of stretching the wounds on his tail. It felt happier than he had been in a long time.

He did a dolphin-esque flip through the air, propelling himself out of the water and arching backwards and meeting the water again upside down and he wondered if Steve was watching.

He didn't go back.

END OF BOOK ONE


	16. Chapter Fifteen

BOOK TWO

Chapter Fifteen

Steve returned home alone. He spent the rest of the day cleaning up his house. He threw out the fish in the kitchen and scrubbed the blood out of the carpet and put his wet, fishy-smelling sheets into the washing machine. He didn't know if anything could be done about his wet mattress, and it smelled very, very strongly of fish and Bucky and so in the end, he dragged it outside and threw it in the dumpster. He slept on the floor that night, the spot he would have had Bucky not insisted on being held, had not given him those searching, heartbroken eyes.

He felt the house was surprisingly quiet without Bucky to talk to and spend time with and haul around.

In the morning, Steve went down to the market and saw Harry there. He saw red and Harry left with a broken nose.

Afterwards, Steve ran down to the beach and sat at the edge of the water and waited. He waited all day and Bucky didn't show up and Steve finally left, defeated.

He waited at the beach for Bucky for days, each day losing more and more hope, and a few weeks into this routine, a few of his crew members approached him with news.

The Commando had been repaired and the cargo ship was ready to sail again.

"Give me a few more weeks," Steve begged. "Just a little while longer, please. I want to be here if he comes."

It wasn't long before Steve lost almost everyone. None of his old friends could get through to him and he didn't feel much of a desire to try because he knew they all agreed with Harry. His crew were starting to get antsy and he heard rumors that a couple of them were going to look for other work if Steve didn't get back into action soon.

"Bucky," Steve said to the water one day. "Where are you?" The sea was silent. Steve closed his eyes. "I wanted to tell you. I had to tell you-" He stopped, his throat closing up. "I'll just tell the ocean now and maybe…" He scrubbed at his eyes. "Maybe you'll hear it. I wanted to say I love you, too, okay? I hadn't told you yet, because I thought we had more time, but you're probably dead now because I let you go." Steve hugged himself. "They say if you love someone, you let them go and if they love you, they'll come back." He choked back a sob and squeezed himself tighter. "Where are you? You were supposed to come back! I hadn't told you yet, so you were supposed to come back!"

Steve broke and loud sobs escaped him. He picked up rocks and threw them into the ocean and waded in knee-deep to scream at the vast water, kicking at the sand, slapping at the surface. He dropped to his knees.

"You were supposed to come back, you idiot, you were supposed to be back here!" He screamed. "I don't need you, FINE! Stay away! See if I care! I don't need you and your stupid face and your stupid eyes and your stupid tail with your frigging everything so stupid! I hate you, I don't care!" Steve wept loudly and kicked at the water again, ending up on his butt. "Go be dead, I don't care," he cried. "You've died on me once before! Shoulda guessed you'd do it again you unreliable shit!"

Steve dragged himself back onto land once he was too exhausted to scream and sob anymore and he went home and sat alone in his tub and the next day, he called his crew together and got on The Commando and left the familiar beach behind.


	17. Chapter Sixteen

_Posting two bc that's just how I roll. -BlitheBells_

Chapter Sixteen

Steve sailed The Commando for several weeks and told himself not to look at the water. He was always hopeful that he'd stare down and see a dark-haired head bobbing, looking up at him with that sheepish, close-lipped smile, but he never did.

What he saw instead were pirates. His ship was intercepted and captured and Steve was tied up and crammed in a disgusting cell on another disgusting ship while his crewmen were slaughtered in front of him. There was nothing he could do, but he tried, screaming and cursing and throwing himself against the bars and trying unsuccessfully to worm his way out.

The pirates stole their food supplies and cargo and tossed the bodies overboard and Steve screamed, tears wetting his cheeks.

He stayed there for a day or two, evidently being held hostage, but when there was no one to pay a price for him because no one in the world cared, the pirates decided they'd just kill him.

The day they dragged Steve out and undid his ropes and had a knife to his throat, everything stopped. Steve heard a song on the wind and melted into it, suddenly forgetting everything about where and who he was. The others seemed to as well and the knife at Steve's throat clattered to the deck.

Then, the song in the air came with a voice in his mind and he felt awash with it.

_Jump_, the voice in his mind crooned. _Come over to the edge, follow my voice, that's it_. Steve felt in an instant that there was nothing else he wanted except to obey. He felt smitten. He felt drowned in adoration. He'd follow the song to the end of the world. He'd do anything it asked. And his feet knew how to follow directions, carrying Steve to the edge and he leaned over, trying to get closer and closer to the song, heeding it's every beautiful, lilting notes. So he noticed when the voice in his mind warbled and broke off and then sang, _Steve?! Steve!_

Yes, Steve thought disorientedly. That's me. I'm Steve.

_No, no, no, Steve, turn around!_ The voice cried, but the song was broken, his voice was shaking and Steve looked down with a sudden clarity as his mind was released to realize that he was standing with a few other men on the ledge of the ship, balancing precariously. _Grab the rail, get on board, go below deck_, _cover your ears, _the voice sang but it sang with an emotional franticness versus the hypnotic calm from earlier and the spell over Steve was broken. He looked down at the dark water and saw flashes of scales, what looked like human bodies, and a chill went through him.

He tried to obey the voice's new command, to _turn, go, please be safe, Steve_, but his feet were slipping. He gasped and cried out and before he knew it, he was falling.

He hit the water hard and the air was knocked out of him and he sank into the ocean. He couldn't see and he couldn't breathe and the song was gone from his head. From what he could gather, he was being surrounded and he felt freezing hands grasp his torso and squeeze too tight. A pair of teeth came down on his shoulder, sharp, pointed teeth, and he sucked in water in shock and choked. Then, the teeth were yanked away and he felt the water become tumultuous around him but for one second, he felt gentle, cold hands on his cheeks and a pair of lips press to his forehead in a kiss. Bucky, he thought. Bucky's here. He reached out to grab him, tried to take his hands, but they slipped out of his grasp before he could take them.

His lungs were burning. He was starting to see spots.

There were more hands on him, all over him, and more teeth, and he couldn't scream.

Bucky, he thought desperately as fangs pierced his skin and cold hands began to try to tear him apart. Bucky!

Pair by pair, hands were pulled off of him and he heard the water swishing around him. The spots in his vision were starting to go orange and black now. If Bucky didn't hurry, he wasn't going to make it.

Then, something hit him in the gut. Something big and cold and he didn't recognize what it was and he put his hands down on his stomach and felt something sticking out of him, piercing right through him, and a wave of pain rippled out. But the hands all fell away, all of them except for one pair, which wrapped him up and pulled him in to a familiar body, familiar if not significantly less boney and starved, and Steve slung his arms around Bucky's neck weakly.

He was starting to lose consciousness when his head broke water, Bucky's hands around his chest, lifting him higher, and he choked and coughed and sputtered. Then, with a powerful heave, he was thrown through the air and up and he flailed and cried out and when he came down, he hit cold, wet rock, some underwater cave. He was still spitting up water and sucking in air and he rolled over onto his back and moaned. He heard familiar Bucky sounds beneath him, whines and hisses, and he blinked water out of his eyes and tried to take in his surroundings.

He crawled to the edge of the rock and looked down.

Bucky was in the water a few feet below, looking up at him with wide eyes. He reached up and let out a sound. Steve groaned and then rolled over again.

He searched his stomach until he found the piece sticking out of him and he tore it out of his gut with a cry. When he brought it up to his face to examine, he realized with a sinking dismay that it was all too familiar. One of Bucky's barbs, the poison, gone in the wrong direction. He moaned for a second time and tossed the barb behind him and into the water where Bucky swam himself in anxious circles. He heard it hit the water and Bucky freeze.

Then, loud crying started up, sounds Bucky used to make when he was missing the ocean, wails and sobs. Seve leaned over the rock again and dangled his hand down towards Bucky. Bucky was looking up with tears running down his face, slapping the water. He reached up, trying to reach Steve's fingers and for a second, they brushed.

"You crying?" Steve said. Bucky sobbed. "You shouldn't." He swallowed and tried to sound calm. "How long does this stuff take to kill? Ten minutes? Twenty?" Bucky shook his head slowly. "What, five minutes?" Steve cried. "I got that long?" In response, he wrapped his arms around himself and started sinking lower and lower into the dark water, letting his long, deep moan be swallowed up by the water. 'Hey!" Steve cried, leaning over the side more. "Hey, get back here, where do you think you're going?!"

The tip of Bucky's tail slapped the top of the water as he turned around and swam away as fast as he could.

"Damn," Steve breathed and rolled back over, staring up at the ceiling of the rocky cave and putting his hands over his stomach. The spot he'd been hit was starting to swell. Steve grit his teeth together and swallowed and blinked hard. He was dying. He was dying all alone. "Bucky, get back here, you dumbass," he croaked and the only answer was the echo of his voice back to him.

He let out a loud sob and clamped his hand over his mouth, trembling. No, no tears. He was gonna die bravely.

The longer he lay there, the sicker he felt. He was dizzy, he couldn't breathe, he thought he might vomit. He turned on his side and curled himself up and shuddered. He could feel parts of him shutting down. This was it. He was a goner.

Then, something came flying out of the air below him and smacked him in the face and Steve jumped and cried out. He picked it up to find a wet, spongey sea creature in his hand. He looked over the side of the rock and there was Bucky, looking up at him desperately.

"The hell am I supposed to do with this?" He managed to wheeze and Bucky rubbed his hand vigorously on his chest. "What?" Steve said and Bucky sucked in his bottom lip anxiously. He pointed up at Steve, at the sponge in his hand, and scrubbed his chest again. "For… For the wound," Steve put together. "I rub this on the wound."

Bucky nodded emphatically and Steve obeyed immediately, pressing the sponge to the hot, swollen circle of pain in his gut. Immediately, he felt relief wash over him. The pain went down and he could see straight again and his stomach settled and he laid on his back and let out a breathe.

"I'm not gonna die," Steve breathed. "Right?" He looked over the edge and Bucky was nodding, sticking himself up out of the water as far as he could. "Oh, good," he said and turned back around. "I was worried you'd left me for a moment." Bucky whined and Steve glanced around to see him shaking his head. "Thanks," he said. "Thank you."

They stayed there for a while while Steve closed his eyes. All he could hear was the echo of the water lapping against the rocks and Bucky was silent.

"How far are we from shore?" Steve finally asked after a while. "How am I supposed to get back?"

He didn't bother to turn around again. "I know, I know, you can't answer. I didn't exactly think to grab a notebook for you as you sang me off a damn ship."

Bucky let out a shaking, audible breath.

"You better find some way to explain yourself," Steve said. "Find a mermaid translator that can talk."

His only response was the splashing as Bucky left again.

"Be back soon," he muttered.


	18. Chapter Seventeen

Chapter Seventeen

Bucky did come back, and he announced himself by pelting Steve with things from below. Steve scrambled, surprised, as wet objects hit him in the face and rained down around him. A few sopping wet coats. A waterlogged toiletries box. Some capped water bottles, and other necessities. Steve caught everything and placed it in a corner and leaned down on his stomach over the edge of the rock to see Bucky setting up a giant piece of rusting sheetmetal against the rock opposite him so he could see it's surface clearly. Then, he picked up a marker.

"Hello, Steve!" Bucky wrote. "Hello, hello, hello!" Steve stared at him now, now that he wasn't dying, and took him in. His tail was scarred over horribly where Harry had hurt him and Steve could see it under the water. He had scars from the bullets in his back, too, but other than than, he looked fine. He glowed, in fact, at having seen Steve, and Steve realized with some relief that he couldn't count Bucky's ribs anymore. In fact, he even seemed to have a healthy layer of pudge over his tummy. Steve realized he'd forgotten what he looked like without the hollow cheeks and bony chest.

"Hi, Bucky," Steve replied.

"I missed you," Bucky wrote. He turned around and looked at Steve with adoring eyes.

"I missed you, too," Steve said. "You never came back. To the sand. I thought you'd washed your hands of me. Or, you know, died." Bucky's shoulders fell and he whirled back around to his writing board.

"Never," he wrote. "I just had-" Steve noticed him hesitate before continuing. "Things. I had to deal with."

"You're looking significantly healthier," Steve said and Bucky looked over at him and sunk down further into the water shamefully. Only the top of his head and his hand appeared and he wrote again.

"Yes,thatwasoneofthosethings," he wrote hastily.

"I'll assume you worked something out," Steve said and Bucky's face slowly appeared out of the water again to look at him. He nodded a little. Then, he wrote again on the board and Steve expected him to explain, but he didn't.

"When did you become a pirate?" He asked and Steve scoffed.

"I'm not a pirate," he said. "I'm still the captain of a cargo ship, Buck."

"I found you on a pirate ship," Bucky wrote, looking at Steve questioningly and Steve let out a breath. He dropped his hand again, letting it dangle.

"We were captured," he admitted quietly. "A lot of my men died. We aren't fighters, we're just travellers, but, uh…" He frowned down at the water. "Pretty much everyone was killed and they were about to kill me, too. You actually stopped them."

"I never would have sang to _you_," Bucky wrote apologetically. "Only them."

"That's your deal now, isn't it?" Steve said, putting it together. "You only eat the bad guys." Bucky nodded a little.

"I was gonna die," he wrote. "I was almost there, I couldn't even get up the energy to swim, and the idea came to me to only kill people who kill others." He looked over his shoulder at Steve for approval. "It's not perfect," he wrote slowly. "And I don't pretend to be a judge of anybody but-" He looked at Steve for a second time and this time he nodded and Bucky continued. "I was dying. I didn't have much of a choice."

"It's a good plan, Bucky," Steve said. "It could use some fine tuning, clearly, because you caught _me_-" Steve laughed. "But it's a good plan."

Then, Steve swallowed. A few quiet moments passed.

"I waited by the beach for months," he said quietly and Bucky looked at him, blinking. "You couldn't have stopped by even once?"

"I did!" He wrote. "I've been going back recently. You haven't been there."

"Well, recently, I've stopped," Steve replied. "I had my ship back, my job back, I had to work. And you… You weren't there."

"I'm sorry," Bucky wrote. "I'm sorry I'm sorry I'm sorry."

"Where were you?" Steve said and Bucky looked up at him.

"Half dead at the bottom of the ocean somewhere," he wrote and glanced back up with those apologetic eyes and Steve groaned.

"I told you," Steve cried. "I knew it, I knew you'd be in trouble if you went back."

"But I took care of it," Bucky wrote. "I had more of a chance here, Steve."

"I had to throw out my mattress, Buck," Steve admitted. "Had to scrub my carpets because they smelled like you. I put your picture face down because I couldn't stand to look at you anymore, it hurt too much."

Bucky flinched.

"I missed you," he wrote slowly.

"I grieved you," Steve replied angrily and sat up a little. "Twice." He heard the sound of Bucky turning the sheet metal over for more writing room, but he didn't want to read any more words. Bucky seemed to sense this, because the last thing he wrote covered the entire surface and he slapped the water to get Steve's attention.

"I love you," he wrote in big letters and Steve stared for a minute in pain before retreating further back on his rock where Bucky couldn't see him anymore and wrapping his arms around his knees and burying his face. He heard the metal wobble and hit the water, the horrible sound of claws across it's surface, and then splashing as Bucky dove away.


	19. Chapter Eighteen

Chapter Eighteen

Bucky returned later in the day and Steve was still taking inventory of all the things he'd been thrown.

"What is all this?" He asked. "Where'd you get this?"

"Sang at a cruise ship," Bucky wrote on a new board, an actual whiteboard this time, and held it up.

"What?" Steve cried. "With kids?" Bucky frowned.

"I didn't hurt them," he wrote. "I just made them to throw stuff over." Steve saw Bucky's jaw tick with frustration. He wiped the board clean and wrote again and held it up. "You don't trust me very much."

"Well sometimes, you seem more siren than human," Steve accused and Bucky glared.

"I AM a siren," he wrote and underlined the words. "Not human at all! Siren! And that's IT!" He turned the board around, wiped it, wrote, and held it up again. "I'm not even human a little bit!"

"Why are you saying this?" Steve cried.

"Because it's true!" Bucky replied. "Why? Is being friends with a siren less appealing?"

"Actually, yes," Steve shot back. "Most people would say it's a pretty boneheaded idea." Bucky glared for a long time before he wrote again.

"I'm not evil," he wrote. "I'm a siren. There's a difference." Steve didn't answer. "HELLO?" Bucky wrote angrily. "I'm sorry I don't have legs, because apparently that means you're inherently better."

"Take me back," Steve ordered him. "This instant." Bucky's angry scowl fell a little and he lowered the whiteboard. He stared at Steve. "What?" Steve cried. "I want to go back, I want to go home."

"Sorry," Bucky wrote. "But, um, I think that'd be a bad idea."

"Oh, no," Steve groaned. "Is this payback? Is this what you're doing, this is revenge?" Bucky's face hardened again.

"You really think I'm the worst, don't you," he scrawled. "You really don't trust me at _all_."

"I don't think you're the worst," Steve replied.

"When I was on land, you were quicker to believe I'd eat your friend before you'd consider that your friend might have been hurting me," he wrote angrily. "I had to force you to listen to me."

"You have to admit, it looked bad," Steve said and Bucky slapped the water. His eyes were starting to shine wetly.

"No!" He wrote in thick letters. "You were supposed to trust me! You were supposed to be my friend! I was losing my SCALES and you almost turned around and left me!"

"I'm sorry!" Steve yelled. "Okay, I'm sorry! Now take me back!"

"I can't do that!" Bucky wrote. "You'd be dead in a day!"

"What are you talking about?" Steve cried.

"The _poison_, you idiot!" Bucky replied. "It's still in your system, the sponge just makes it a little better! You can't leave until it's out of your system! You're still poisoned!"

"And whose fault is that," Steve growled and Bucky threw his whiteboard into the water. He was shaking and glaring up at Steve and tears spilled down his cheeks. Then, he turned around and swam away again. "Yeah, go!" Steve yelled after him. "I don't need your help, you ass! Go!" And when Bucky was far enough away that Steve couldn't see him anymore, he collapsed onto the rock and held himself and tried desperately not to cry.


	20. Chapter Nineteen

Chapter Nineteen

Everything Bucky brought him was sopping wet, which Steve understood and tried not to resent, except for the fact that they were things that shouldn't necessarily be wet, like pillows and clean pants. Bucky refused to speak to him for the rest of the day, even when Steve apologized and leaned over the edge to reach him and he didn't acknowledge Steve when he blew kisses in his direction.

"Aw, come on," Steve grumbled. "That's your thing, you like blowing kisses." Bucky didn't respond. "You're really this mad? Come on!"

Steve did not consider telling Bucky he loved him. He remembered promising to himself that that would be the first thing he did if he ever saw Bucky again, but things were different and Steve was honestly a little afraid. It wasn't that Bucky didn't love him, because he knew that he did, it was that Steve knew if they both loved each other, it would hurt worse the more and more it became obvious that staying together was impossible. They'd tried this already, this keeping each other. It hadn't even worked when Bucky was human so who was to say that it'd work now, when Bucky ate people and breathed water?

There was too much pain. It was too complicated. He couldn't do it and everything hurt too much.

"You never told me," Steve said finally that night as he wrung the third pillow out. "You never told me why you didn't kill me." Bucky glanced over at him from where he was propping himself up on a rock and running his fingers through his hair. He dove into the water to retrieve his whiteboard and came back up.

"What are you talking about," he wrote.

"The first time you saw me," Steve said. "You didn't know me but you didn't kill me." Bucky rolled his eyes.

"You know why I didn't kill you," he wrote.

"I don't," Steve said. Bucky glared.

"Because I fell in love with you," he wrote, jabbing at the board so hard with the pen that Steve could hear it. "Is that not obvious?"

"Love at first sight isn't real," Steve said.

"Says you," Bucky replied.

"Are you sure it wasn't, I dunno, because you kind of remembered me?" Steve asked. He set his pillow down behind him, although it was still wet. "I mean, maybe you loved me and when you saw me, you remembered loving me."

"I don't know and I don't care," Bucky wrote.

"You gotta care a little," Steve prodded. He looked around for a spot to climb down, hoping he could meet Bucky. He found a smaller ledge and slid himself down. "That was the last twenty five years of your life, and it was with _me_." Bucky glared.

"That would matter why?" He wrote. Steve stopped and tried to grin at him prettily.

"Because you love me," he said in a teasing, sing-song voice, trying to lighten the mood, but Bucky only ground his teeth back and forth loudly. Maybe that had been insensitive.

"I don't care about remembering," he wrote. "I don't care at all. And stop making fun of me. Liking you at all is torture enough, I promise."

"Why?" Steve cried, ignoring the jab. "Why don't you care?" He found another ledge even closer to the water and climbed onto that one, inching closer and closer to Bucky. The water lapped at his bare feet.

"It won't change anything!" Bucky replied. "It won't change one single thing. Not me, not you. Not my feelings or yours. Not my _species_ or yours. So I don't care."

Steve reached out for Bucky, leaning over the water. Bucky looked him up and down and turned his nose up, setting his board down and turning away.

"If you aren't swimming over here, I'm swimming over there," he said.

"Why?" Bucky wrote and held the board up over his shoulder.

"Because I want to sleep and I'm not sleeping without you," Steve said.

"You can't sleep in the water," Bucky replied. He turned a little more now and pointed down where the water got deep. "I was going to sleep there."

"Well, can you pick a spot with a little more air nearby?" Steve asked. "Like, you know, right here?" Bucky was seething.

"You have made it abundantly clear what your feelings are," he said. "I'd appreciate it if you'd stop tormenting me about it."

"I'm not tormenting you!" Steve cried and Bucky rolled his eyes.

"Right," he said and made a face at Steve. "And that's why you're joking about sleeping with me again."

"It's not a joke," Steve said and Bucky looked like he might cry again.

"I'm done begging and pleading and looking pitiful in front of you," he said. "Stop patronizing me."

"I'm not!" Steve cried. "I'm really not!" Bucky hissed at him and turned around again. "Fine," Steve said and threw his hands up. "I don't care."

"I don't care, either," Bucky held the board up over his shoulder.

"Good night," Steve said.

"Good. Night," Bucky wrote. There was a long quiet where Steve expected Bucky to cave and he didn't.

"I'm going to sleep now," Steve sang, stretching out on the rock and lying his head on the wet pillow. "You're missing your chance!" Bucky whirled around and hissed again violently and then threw himself into the water. Steve sat up to watch him sink to the very, very bottom of the cave and curl himself up in a circle. He sat up and fluffed his wet pillow and rolled his eyes angrily. "Sea creatures," he growled spitefully.


	21. Chapter Twenty

Chapter Twenty

In the morning, Bucky hit Steve in the face with a second sea sponge. Steve jolted away, spitting salt water and shouting.

"Do you always have to aim right for my face?!" He yelled.

"Good morning," Bucky replied, holding his board up coldly. "This is a sponge. Use it."

"I hate you," Steve glowered, but he pressed to sponge down to clean the again throbbing wound in his stomach.

"I hate you, too," Bucky replied and swam away.

"Liar," Steve growled. When Bucky returned a few minutes later, he had a few dead fish in his hands and he dropped them in front of Steve. Steve looked at him.

"Remember when I gave you dead fish and you puked?" He said. "The exact same thing is gonna happen to me, you know."

"I'm working on it," Bucky replied. "There's no dry wood."

"Yeah," Steve rolled his eyes. "Lets just build a fire under the ocean. Great idea."

"You're kind of being an ass," Bucky replied. He looked genuinely hurt. "I'm doing everything I can for you. I'm not even asking for a thank you, I'm just asking for you to cut it out with the snide comments."

Steve looked at him and didn't answer. Bucky sucked on his bottom lip.

"I don't know why you're being so mean," he wrote in small letters and Steve set the sponge aside and wrapped his arms around his legs. He looked at the rock underneath him and frowned. But Bucky was waiting for an explanation and Steve talked, if at least to fill the void where he knew he was expected to say something.

"I thought you were dead," he said quietly. "I thought I'd lost you for a second time."

"And so you're being extra mean to make up for lost time," Bucky wrote and Steve couldn't help but laugh a little. Bucky smiled at him a bit from behind the board, the first smile he'd seen from him since they talked together on the beach what felt like ages ago.

"I was just…," Steve struggled to find the words. "I'm sorry, Bucky, I don't mean to make you feel bad, I just…"

"Just what?" Bucky prodded and Steve hugged himself tighter and shrugged.

"I was in pain, okay?" He said. "It hurt. I was mad at you, too. For dying again and leaving me behind."

"That's not a very good excuse," Bucky wrote. "Especially considering that I'm alive." Steve choked out a laugh and shrugged.

"It's all I got," he said. Bucky set his board down and leaned himself up against the rock Steve was sitting on, just deep enough under the water that both arms were visible. He looked up at him and smiled a little and then Steve's vision of him was blurred by tears. He sucked in a breath and leaned forward and pressed his cheek to Bucky's head, scooting as close as he could come, pulling him closer. He kissed his hair and wrapped his arms around him and Bucky came up further out of the water to throw his arm around his neck. Steve felt him nuzzle his face into the crook of his neck but then, he pulled away.

"You confuse me," he scrawled on his board. "And _that_ hurts. Why would you kiss me? Do you or do you not love me?"

"Why do we have to talk about it?" Steve asked. "Why can't we just enjoy it?"

"Enjoy what?" Bucky replied. "Clearly you're enjoying some peace of mind that I don't have." Steve looked down. He wasn't sure what to say to Bucky. Bucky prodded him with the board and Steve looked up to see he had written, "well?" He took it back and then added, "I need a solid answer, Steve."

"No!" Steve cried. "No, I don't love you, okay?" Bucky swallowed. He looked like he had been hit. "Oh, come on, don't give me that face. You can't ask that question without bracing yourself for an answer you don't want to hear." Bucky just nodded, then nodded again faster. He looked away and shrugged and started to pull himself away from Steve. "Bucky," Steve said.

It's just better this way, he thought. And it would be better had Steve not had any feelings for him and Steve _didn't_ have any feelings for him, and then when he had to leave, it would be easier. He would spare himself the pain of loving someone who lived in a completely different world than he did. It was better for them both.

"Then stop," Bucky wrote and Steve looked up when he heard the marker against the board. "Stop kissing me. Stop asking to sleep next to me. Just stop. Cause you're making it worse."

"Alright, fine," Steve said. "Fine, sure."

"Thank you," Bucky wrote and he set his whiteboard on a rock and sunk under the water and disappeared and Steve stood up and smoothed his hair back and let out a shaky breath, hoping he hadn't made a mistake.


	22. Chapter Twenty-One

Chapter Twenty-One

Bucky returned with food stolen from off ships and packaged in plastic and threw the dead fish carcasses away.

"You were right," he wrote. Steve noticed he was avoiding his eyes. "Cooking something underwater, that's dumb."

"I appreciated it," Steve said quietly. "The thought at least." Bucky shrugged and disappeared again.

They continued on this way for a few days and spoke relatively little until one day, Bucky approached Steve with an oxygen tank and mask.

"What is this," Steve said, picking it up and turning it over. "Is this… Scuba diving stuff?"

"Swim with me," Bucky said, holding his board out. "Let me show you things."

"Where did you get this?" Steve asked and Bucky rolled his eyes.

"Relax," he said. "I put her on land before I took it. She's fine."

"You ripped this off a _person_?" Steve said.

"Come on," Bucky wrote. "Come with me, come on." He was grinning. "It'll be fun, you'll like it."

"I dunno," Steve said. "The ocean's sort of a scary place."

"I'll protect you," Bucky promised.

"I'm serious," Steve said. "Honestly, it's a miracle nothing's gotten in here and tried to eat me yet."

"Because I've stopped them!" Bucky said.

"They've already tried?" Steve cried. "See, look, that's just too much for me. There's all sorts of stuff out there and I'm struggling to stay alive as it is."

"I'm a good fighter, Steve," Bucky reassured him. "I'm strong. I can save you and I'll keep you away from the dangerous stuff."

"What if we get lost?" Steve asked and Bucky rolled his eyes.

"Who do you think I am?" He asked. "Have a little faith."

Steve then remembered Bucky's hurt face over the words, "you really don't trust me at all" and he felt a pang of guilt. He ought to trust him. He ought to try.

Steve put the mask on over his face and tied the tank to his back and let Bucky grab him and pull him in.

Bucky wrapped his arms around Steve and Steve could feel him pumping his tail as he propelled them out of the tight cave entrance and Steve squeezed his eyes shut and put his head against Bucky's chest and let him. Once they were out, Bucky let go of Steve gently and Steve opened his eyes. It was dark underwater, and cold, and Steve took a heavy breath, unable to pretend to himself that he wasn't even a little afraid. But Bucky seemed confidant and Steve followed him when he gestured him. Bucky even made sure to go slow enough so Steve could keep up and sometimes grabbed his hand and yanked him along.

Bucky took them deeper and deeper, until Steve could hardly see anymore, and then he stopped. Steve grabbed his arm and tried to look out at what Bucky was pointing at. He squinted through the blackness and then it came together.

Ships. Thousands of sunken, broken ships littered the ground and he sucked in air and looked at Bucky, who was grinning. With Steve's hands still on his arm, Bucky took them down lower and lower until they could rest on one of the rotting decks. Steve let his feet drop down to the floor and felt his ears pop and Bucky let him go and swam around him. He wished he could tell what Bucky was thinking.

They went in and out of a few of the ships and sometimes, when they found something interesting, Bucky would hold it under his arm or sling it around Steve's neck and smile at him and they would keep going.

More than once, Steve was hit with the desire to run his hands through Bucky's hair and press his lips to his skin and he shook it off and scolded himself.

Emotions were painful and useless and unhelpful and he hated them.

Bucky showed him other things, too, like beautiful tropical fish and tiny island oases and once, Steve thought he saw a shark and he swam forward and clung to Bucky and Bucky smiled a little and rolled his eyes at him and took them both away faster.

When Steve's air began to run out, Bucky took him back to the cave and helped him up on the rocks. He grabbed his whiteboard immediately.

"Wasn't that cool?" Bucky asked as Steve pulled off the mask and started trying to undo the oxygen tank from around his back. "Did you like it?"

"Yeah," Steve said as he pulled at a buckle on his back. "Yeah, everything was amazing. Thank you." Bucky leaned further out of the water and waved him over and Steve turned around and Bucky undid the straps on his back for him. When he got the tank off and sunk back into the water, he took the board up again and smiled sadly at Steve.

"I know you have to leave, but I'd love for you to stay and see it with me all the time," he wrote. Steve shrugged.

"I don't have to leave just yet," he said. Bucky sucked his bottom lip into his mouth and let out a breath.

"I'm not gonna pretend you'll be here forever," he wrote. "I know this isn't permanent and when you're better, you'll go back to your home with your scrubbed carpets and your face down photos of me. I know I can't keep you."

Steve was silent, looking at him. The conversation had suddenly gained weight and he swallowed. Then, Bucky wrote more.

"You thought you could keep me," he wrote and Steve frowned.

"I never said that," he argued. "I told you you'd leave, I told you I'd take you back."

"But you didn't want to," Bucky replied. "You wanted to keep me." Steve blinked and suddenly, tears blurred his vision. He couldn't help but nod.

"I wanted to keep you," he whispered.

"You wanted me to be human," Bucky added and Steve rubbed at his eyes angrily and pressed his mouth together.

"Can you blame me?" Steve cried. "Don't you understand?"

"No, you don't understand," Bucky wrote. "And you _didn't_ understand. This is all you get. I'm sorry. Its me like this or nothing because there is literally nothing else for me to give you."

"Am I supposed to be grateful that you're this?" Steve said and Bucky frowned at him.

"You're supposed to be understanding," he replied. "That's all."

"You're the one who came to me and called yourself a monster," Steve said and Bucky swallowed.

"Is it okay that I think I might have been wrong?" He wrote and Steve looked him up and down, studied him. He let out a breath. "You told me I wasn't monstrous," Bucky continued when Steve didn't. "Do you remember that?"

"Of course," Steve said.

"Did you mean it?" Bucky asked and Steve glared.

"Of course!" He said again.

"Then you have to be okay with it," Bucky responded. "With me. With gills and claws. Cause I can't change that."

"I know," Steve said.

"You have to be okay with the fact that I couldn't live in a swimming pool in your backyard," Bucky said. "And that I will never be able to live on land with you. You have to be understanding of that." Bucky was looking at him desperately and Steve saw tears in his eyes.

"How can you ask me to be okay with that?" Steve said. "I want to be with you!"

"And I want to be with you, but it's more complicated than just letting me squeeze myself into your bathtub for a few hours!" Bucky wrote. "We'll have to work something out and I don't know how, but it can't be that! You can't expect me to live like a human!" He was sucking in and holding breaths in an effort not to let tears spill. Steve looked at him and wanted to hold him, wished he could make it easier. He stared for a few seconds while Bucky crumbled slowly. "Please," he wrote. "I just want your acceptance. Please."

"Of course you have it," Steve whispered. "Gills and claws and all. I won't ask you to do something that you can't. I'm sorry." Bucky reached forward and took one of Steve's hands and squeezed it and Steve squeezed back. "What are we gonna do?" He whispered and Bucky shook his head and blinked and tears ran down his face. He took his hand back to rub his cheeks and kept shaking his head. "I dunno either," Steve replied.


	23. Chapter Twenty-Two

Chapter Twenty-Two

The next day, when Bucky tossed another sponge up onto the rock beside Steve, he examined it instead of using it and looked over at Bucky.

"How does this even work?" He asked. "Cause if it's just cleaning it, I can do that at home. I have water and sponges in my bathroom."

"It's special," Bucky wrote. "It's not about the water, it's about the particular sponge. It has an antidote in it, but the antidote is only good for so long." Bucky looked at him and shrugged and wrote more. "It's supposed to make it just that much harder to recover from the poison unless, you know, I help you."

"That's the weirdest thing I've ever heard," Steve said as he pressed it once again to his wound. It looked healed and he could hardly see the spot where he'd been punctured, but Bucky told him it wasn't good enough and Steve didn't argue. After all, he wanted to get back to land, sure, but he wasn't exactly in a hurry.

"I don't think that's true," Bucky wrote and grinned at him.

"Alright, fine," Steve corrected himself and eyed Bucky teasingly. "_You're_ the weirdest thing. How do you like that?"

Bucky splashed him playfully and Steve smacked him in the face with a wet sea sponge.

"This is a mess. This is all your fault," Steve complained, although he didn't really mean it. He gave Bucky a grin and dodged the sponge as it flew back at him."You sung me off the ship to begin with."

"You could have resisted," Bucky wrote. "You put up next to no fight."

"What are you talking about?" Steve asked. "You hypnotized me, I had no choice."

"That's not true," Bucky wrote.

"Oh, really?" Steve challenged and Bucky shrugged.

"I just put suggestions in people's minds," he wrote. "Really, really nice suggestions. People have fought it before. You have a choice."

"And so all these people just _choose_ to hop off a ship and into your mouth?" Steve said and Bucky growled at him.

"All I'm saying is you could have stopped yourself," he said. "I only have so much control. They're _your_ legs and _your_ hands, Steve. I told you to get on the rail and made it seem like a really good idea and you're the one who obeyed." He turned around and wiped the board off and wrote more. "I'm manipulative, sure. That's how I hunt. But I don't take people's control away from them. Not really."

"That sure sounds like you're taking it," Steve said and Bucky glared.

"Alright fine," he wrote. "Let's try."

"What?" Steve said and before he could realize what was going on, Bucky was singing. Steve fell head-first into the hypnotic tune and his face fell slack. He forgot what he had been thinking about.

_Come here_, Bucky sang. _Come here, get into the water._

Well, alright, Steve thought. Why not. He stepped into the water after Bucky.

_Good job_, Bucky sang and Steve felt flushed with pride. _Now swim over here, come to me. Be careful, watch your head. There are rocks, don't scrape yourself._ Steve did exactly as he was told and when he reached Bucky, he waited in the water. _You're doing really well, look at that_, Bucky cooed and Steve smiled at him. _Now put your arms around my neck so you don't have to swim anymore, I'll hold you_. Steve did and Bucky wrapped his arms around him. _There you go, now isn't that nice?_ _You didn't fight very hard, though. Wanna try to say no to me?_

What? Steve thought. No!

_Come on, give it a shot. I don't want you to let go. So… Doesn't that mean you should let go? _

No, Steve thought indignantly and Bucky sighed and his song stopped abruptly. Steve blinked and came back to himself in an instant, staring at Bucky's face. Bucky shrugged and reached over Steve to get his whiteboard while Steve pushed himself away, treading water a few feet from him.

"That was pitiful," Bucky wrote.

"You… You hypnotized me!" Steve cried. "You did it again!"

"You could have told me no," Bucky said. "You wanted to come over here almost as much I wanted you to."

"I-I," Steve said.

"It takes a lot more coercing with people who _know_ they shouldn't be jumping off the ship," Bucky wrote. "People who are adamant that they stay on. And see, you were entirely lucid the whole time. I didn't move your legs for you, now did I?"

Steve glared at him and ground his teeth.

"Fine," he spat. "But I only did it to make you feel better about you bloody singing." Bucky grinned.

"I don't need a confidence boost, thanks," he wrote. "And I think you know that."

"Do it again," Steve growled and Bucky's grin fell.

"Are you sure?" He wrote. "It might give you a headache after a while."

"Do it," Steve said and Bucky shrugged and set his whiteboard down.

He started to sing. Steve felt himself slipping, felt himself want to follow the song.

_Come here_, Bucky sang again. He was smiling now too and holding his arms out to Steve. _Come on, I'm right here. Just swim forward a few feet_.

Okay, Steve thought and then stopped himself. Wait, he thought. No, I…

_What_? _No? _

No, Steve thought and he started to push himself away. Bucky smiled bigger.

_But don't you want to be over here? I'll hold you, I'll sing for you forever. Come on, what's the worst that can happen?_

That's a good point, Steve thought and began to bring himself forward. It's not like you'll do anything to me.

_Of course not,_ Bucky sang sweetly. _I just want to hold you. That's all. _

Steve began to swim closer, but as soon as he did, Bucky bore his teeth and hissed. Steve's face fell and he pulled himself backwards quickly, remembering that that wasn't all that Bucky could do to him.

_Watch out, don't hit yourself, these rocks are sharp._

I'll hit myself if I want to, Steve thought spitefully.

_Really? That's the suggestion you want to disobey?_

Steve continued to swim backwards until he came up against the rocks across the cave and he stopped.

_Come on, it's dangerous over there,_ Bucky sang. _Don't you wanna be over here? With me?_

No, Steve thought.

_Please, Steve?_ Bucky sang. He was holding his arms out again. _Please? Just for a minute. You were right, it's not like I'll do anything to you except love you forever._

Steve stared at him in uncertainty. Bucky smiled again as sweetly as he could.

_You know you want to and I know you want to. Just for one minute, come on? _

Just for one minute, Steve thought. Couldn't hurt.

_Couldn't hurt at all. I could stay in your mind and sing to you all day._

In my… "No! No, get out of my mind!" Steve cried outloud.

_Please?_ Bucky pleaded and he grinned wide. Steve was shaking his head slowly.

No… He thought. "I remember… We're doing this… So I can say no…"

_Are we?_ Bucky asked innocently and cocked his head. _I thought we were doing this so I could love you._

"No, we're not," Steve said.

_Come on,_ Bucky said. _You're so close._

"Stop it, you aren't winning anymore, I am," Steve said and Bucky grinned again. His song died away and a fog fell from Steve's mind.

"That was better," Bucky wrote. "You might have a chance, if I let you off easy."

"Pfft!" Steve cried. "Let me off? You did not, you were fighting!" Bucky rolled his eyes, but he was still smiling.

"Alright, fine, I was fighting near the end," he admitted. "But at the beginning, I helped a lot." Steve rolled his eyes and Bucky sighed. "You did better," he continued. "But other sirens aren't gonna give you a warning beforehand, you know. You're not good enough to have saved your life if this was real."

"But I'm better," Steve grumbled and he climbed back up onto his rock and began stripping his wet clothes off in favor of dry ones.

"Better," Bucky said and smiled at him.


	24. Chapter Twenty-Three

Chapter Twenty-Three

"You're glad, is that it?" Steve asked later that day. "Glad to be out of my house. And my bathtub." Bucky looked over at him. He had pulled himself up on the rock right next to Steve and was he was helping him open packages of freeze dried food, tearing through the plastic with his claws. He set a bag of dried fruit on Steve's lap and took his whiteboard up.

"What do you mean?" He wrote and Steve read over his shoulder.

"I mean you seem different," he said. "This whole time, something's different about you. And I've been trying to figure it out and that's my most recent theory. That you were just so miserable in my house that in comparison, you seem drastically different."

Bucky listened and considered this, and then shook his head, looking at Steve with his wide eyes. Then, he stopped and gave a playful shrug and Steve shoved him.

"I'm serious," he said, but he laughed.

"Am I different in a good way or a bad way?" Bucky wrote and Steve shrugged.

"A good way," he said. "You seem, I dunno. I guess more assured. Like you grew or something. You don't look at me as desperately as you used to." Bucky didn't write more and instead stared down at his board for a while, running his claw down the edges, thinking.

"I guess you're right, in part," he finally wrote and showed Steve. "I'm sorry, because I think you're wonderful and I'd do anything to be near to you, but beached like that-" He stopped and his pen hesitated over the board.

"I get it," Steve said quietly.

"I was humiliated," Bucky wrote in small letters. "And vulnerable. And dying. I loved every minute of you, but I hated every minute of me. Does that make sense?" Steve nodded.

"It didn't work out. I know," he said.

"I guess I could be different," he wrote more after wiping the board off. "It's been a long time and things have happened and-"

"And what?" Steve asked. Bucky was looking down mournfully at his board again. He wiped away each letter individually until Steve, impatient, finally grabbed it from him and smeared it off on his pants and handed it back. "And what?" He asked again and Bucky looked at him. He had puppy dog eyes, if you could say that about a fish person. If all sirens were like this, it wasn't a wonder that so many seamen didn't put up much of a fight diving off their ships.

Steve wanted to kiss the conflicted expression right off his face.

"Remember when I told you that meeting you changed everything?" He finally wrote. Steve nodded.

"No more kill and eat and repeat," he said and Bucky nodded.

"Well, things just kept getting more and more complicated after that and I didn't know what to do," he continued. "For a while, I couldn't really handle it, but I guess I rose to the occasion. I figured it out. At least a little."

"That's good," Steve commented quietly. "You oughta share your methods with me, Buck, I think I could use some figuring out right about now." Bucky smiled a little and shrugged shyly.

"Clearly didn't work _too_ well," he wrote. "After all, every time I think I'm finally on top of things, finally understanding you and me and who I am and what's right and wrong, everything gets harder. Things get more and more complicated. It never stops."

"Do you miss before?" Steve asked. "When things were simpler?" Bucky shook his head slowly.

"I didn't think about it back then," he wrote. "Who I was or who I was killing. Maybe if someone missed me. It never crossed my mind because it just wasn't the way of things and I think that was a bad thing." Bucky wiped his board and continued. "Life isn't any easier now, but it's more meaningful. And I feel like a better person for at least having concerned myself with who I was affecting. Does that make sense?"

Steve nodded a little.

"Yeah," he said quietly. This wasn't exactly what he'd expected to hear. Not that he knew what he'd expected, he just knew it wasn't this. Bucky had gone through a lot of inner turmoil and he probably hadn't made it any easier. He felt a lump welling in his throat. The urge to kiss him grew, despite how Steve shoved it down.

"I wouldn't go back to the kill and eat routine," Bucky wrote. "Not for all the simplicity in the world." He stopped and Steve thought he was finished, but then he took his board up again and wrote more and turned it around. "The price I pay for knowing you is complications and difficult questions and pain."

"Ouch," Steve said.

"But I'd never choose anything else," he continued. "Not if I had to lose you."

Steve looked at him and swallowed and ran his wet hands over his hair, smoothing it back, and he blinked hard. The lump grew in his chest, thick and heavy. He thought maybe he had been making a huge mistake.

"What's wrong?" Bucky wrote after a while of Steve's choked silence. Steve rubbed furiously at his eyes. Bucky frowned. "Was it something I wrote?"

Steve just shook his head and pursed his lips and looked away.


	25. Chapter Twenty-Four

Chapter Twenty-Four

One of the following days, Bucky returned to Steve with gore in his claws, wiping blood away from his mouth. He looked up at Steve with an unreadable expression and Steve peered back down at him from where he lay on one of the highest rocks.

"You look like you just got back from something delicious," Steve said dryly. Bucky picked up his board slowly.

"I just killed and ate a person," he wrote. Steve recognized the battle in his eyes.

"I assumed," he replied. "Satisfying?"

"You remember the person on the pirate ship," Bucky wrote. "The one who was about to kill you a week or so ago?"

"Yeah," Steve said.

"It was him," Bucky said.

"That's real good to know," Steve said back. He was being purposely disinterested. He wasn't sure why they were talking about this, when Steve so obviously didn't care and Bucky was so obviously uncomfortable. He frowned so deeply when he talked about it.

"They were killing more people," Bucky added. "They were plundering a ship."

"We don't have to talk about this if you don't want to," Steve said.

"I want you to know," Bucky said and when he held the board up and looked up at Steve, he looked pleading. "I want you to know I'm not bad."

"I didn't think you were, Buck," Steve replied.

"I snapped his neck first and he didn't even suffer at all," Bucky continued.

"Maybe he should have suffered," Steve said. "Heaven knows a guy like that never spared anyone else any suffering."

"You wouldn't have made him suffer, Steve," Bucky wrote and Steve stopped at looked at him.

"Who cares what _I_ would do," he said.

"You wouldn't have," Bucky wrote and shrugged. "That's all."

"Yeah, so maybe I wouldn't have," Steve said. "All I'm saying is you shouldn't lose too much sleep over it." He rolled over and crossed his arms over his chest and stared at the ceiling where slivers of sunlight broke through. "It works like this, Bucky. Little fish eat plants and big fish eat little fish and people eat big fish and sirens eat people. No person ever cries over a salmon they're eating, right? Well, except for maybe the most sensitive people. You're sort of a sensitive kind of person, Buck."

"It's not like that," Bucky had written once Steve turned just enough to see his response.

"Oh yeah?" Steve said. "Then what's it like?"

"People aren't like salmon," Bucky wrote.

"Maybe to you, they are," Steve said.

"But they aren't!" Bucky wrote back.

"Pfft," Steve said.

"People don't fall in love with salmon, Steve," Bucky wrote.

"No, I guess not," Steve said.

"Even if they cry over them," Bucky added.

"Sure," Steve replied.

"So people aren't like salmon. That may be your 'food chain', but it doesn't make it better. Cause people aren't salmon," Bucky finished. Steve watched his face, watched him set his board back up and start to clean his hands underneath the water, and sighed. Bucky was like goodness. It was like he was on a different plane of expectation. He was a ray of golden frigging sunshine, he was like the siren equivalent of getting a star sticker on a paper in school or enjoying a first kiss. He was all that and more. Steve didn't think he could have fallen in love more deeply, but studying his face then, contemplating his words, he found he did. Bucky made him feel overwhelming love. He didn't want to give him up when the time came. He didn't want to say goodbye.

"I think you and me see the world from completely different perspectives," Steve mused quietly and Bucky looked up at him. He smiled a little and shrugged and Steve rolled himself over on his stomach and considered this. He thought maybe his resolve to tell himself to stop loving Bucky was growing weaker and weaker.


	26. Chapter Twenty-Five

Chapter Twenty-Five

"I said I don't care about who I was before," Bucky wrote one day.

"Yeah," Steve said, studying Bucky's face. His eyes were unreadable. "So?"

"So I've thought about it a little," Bucky continued. Steve waited for him and he didn't go on.

"Yeah?" Steve said again, prodding him. Bucky's shoulder's came in further anxiously.

"It's scary," he wrote. "That's all. That's all I was thinking about it."

"What's so scary?" Steve asked and Bucky looked at him for a minute before writing more.

"It makes things more complicated," he wrote. "Harder, somehow."

"Okay," Steve said.

"How would you feel?" Bucky wrote more, going faster, starting to scrawl his letters together. "If someone came up to you and told you they knew you but you were a whole different person and you don't even remember the person you used to be? Or what if someone came up to you and said you used to be a salmon?"

"Hey," Steve said. "You said people aren't salmon." Bucky rolled his eyes and rubbed his forearm across his board, bracing it against his tail.

"They aren't," he continued with something of a grin. "It's an imperfect metaphor, work with me." Steve laughed.

"Yeah, I guess that'd be a little strange," he said.

"And I just keep thinking, like I owe something to human me," Bucky wrote. "There's all these unanswered questions and weird moral grounds and I just-" He stopped. Steve waited patiently for him. "You know," he finally continued. "Ever since I found you and everything turned on it's head, I've been trying to figure out why I am the way I am and if that's okay and if it's my fault and how I can live with myself. It's hard enough without thinking that I might have been someone in a past life who would be afraid of me now. It's like thinking I've become something bad. Like I used to be better and then something happened and now I'm different in a bad way."

"I understand," Steve said and Bucky shook his head.

"Do you?" He wrote in small letters in the margin. "Do you though? Because it's okay if you don't. I don't think you do.

"I don't want it to be my fault. I can't see how it would be but it's easy to blame myself. It's somehow easier to hope I can change if I just stop doing the things I'm supposed to do, like eating and swimming and singing, but I can't. I'll die if I do and I can't let myself die because it's not my fault, right? I didn't do anything to deserve death, I just did what I had to do. Right? Can I be blamed for being something that has to do those things? I didn't choose it.

"Even if I was a human, I have to come to terms with what I am now. Gills and claws and all. Cause I can't change that."

Bucky wrote with a certain franticness, like he couldn't write down every thought that passed through his head in time. Steve read over his shoulder and when Bucky ran out of room, he'd wipe a line or two away from the top and start there again and keep moving down until the entire board was full again. When he was finished, he threw down his marker and hid his face in the crook of his arm and Steve knelt down and wrapped him up, pulling him close.

"Hey, Buck, come on, shh," he said quietly. "You're right, you can't change that. It's not your fault and look, it's not even a bad thing. You're you and that means you sing and you swim and you breathe water and," he laughed a little. "Eat people. You can't help that. You've tried." Bucky let out a breath and leaned his head against Steve and Steve squeezed him reassuringly. "I like you like this, Bucky," he said. "You're not different in a bad way. You're just different." Bucky pulled away a little, just enough to reach his marker again.

"Would you have said that when you first met me?" He asked.

"Doesn't matter what I would have said then," Steve said. "Because this is what I'm saying now. You don't owe human you a single damn thought if you don't want to and personally, I think you're perfect. I know that doesn't make everything all better," Steve added. "But I hope it helps a little. Cause honestly, Buck, even if you're not the James Buchanan Barnes I thought you were and everyone was right about you being a completely different person," he shrugged. "I wouldn't care."

Bucky looked over and studied his eyes for a minute, swallowing. He sucked his bottom lip into his mouth thoughtfully.

"Thanks," he wrote.

"Do you, uh, want to know anything about human you?" Steve asked gingerly. "Or, uh, human-maybe-you?" Bucky nodded slowly.

"I want to know how I became who I am and what happened to me," he wrote and Steve nodded a little.

"Well," he said. "The legends all sort of vary, but I'll tell you what I know." Bucky listened to him raptly and Steve resituated himself, sitting next to Bucky and keeping one arm around his shoulder. "They say the ocean is magic and that when people die there, the ocean takes them in and saves them. A few legends say it gives you a choice to live or to die, but if you live, you're tethered to the ocean forever and it gives you gills and fins and everything. Like a trade. Your humanity or your life." Bucky nodded a little silently, deep in thought. "The ocean must have wanted to keep you, Buck," Steve said quietly. "Wanted you so bad it even made you a new arm."

Steve found he was jealous of the ocean. It had claimed Bucky and now no one else could be with him, and especially not Steve. It wasn't fair.

I understand why it loves you so much, Steve thought.


	27. Chapter Twenty-Six

Chapter Twenty-Six

Bucky burst out of the water and onto Steve's rock in the middle of the night, making horrible, choking noises. Steve was startled awake, drenched in cold seawater, and he sat up and cried out. Bucky was grabbing his ankle desperately and Steve thought tears were running down his face in addition to the water and he was choking. Steve stared for a second, not sure what was happening. He wasn't breathing? Why didn't he just breathe? Was it like asthma? Steve knew asthma and it looked something like what was happening to Bucky, he thought, until he noticed Bucky's gills opening and closing and his mouth just gaping and Steve reached over and grabbed his shoulders and shook him.

"Air!" He yelled. "You're breathing _air_, Bucky, switch over! Use your mouth, not your gills, cut it out!" Bucky made another strangled sound and then released Steve's ankle so he could put his hand on his right set of gills and tried to take in a breath with his mouth.

"Yeah," Steve said, still holding his shoulders. "There you go, in and out, use your mouth."

Slowly, Bucky began to breathe again and once Steve had thought he'd gotten ahold of himself, he wailed and covered his face with his hand, pressing his forehead onto the ground. Steve leaned over and started trying to rub his back up and down comfortingly. His shoulders were shaking and he was sucking in air like he'd forgotten how to do it.

"What was that?" Steve said once Bucky's sobs had slowed. "What happened?" Bucky picked up his head a little and looked at him mournfully, then pushed himself off that rock to find the one across the cave where he kept his board and marker. He scrawled and then held it up.

"I have nightmares sometimes," he'd written.

"About what?" Steve asked and Bucky's frown deepened. He turned the board over and wrote again, stopping himself a few times to moan.

"This time," he replied. "He put his hands over my gills and held my head under water. And when I woke up, I tried to get to air because I held my breath in my sleep, but I was still trying to use my gills and I just panicked."

"Wait, who?" Steve said. "Who do you have nightmares about?" Bucky sobbed.

"The one who did this," he wrote and Steve watched him point with his underwater left hand at the red, scarred patch of scaleless flesh on his tail. Steve's mouth gaped a little in surprise and Bucky wrote more. "He scares me. That was one of the worst things that's ever happened to me. I was so helpless."

"Oh," Steve said quietly. He didn't know what else to say. He'd had no idea. "That's… Awful, Buck." Bucky just frowned at him mournfully and wiped his cheeks with the palm of his hand. "You're really shaken, look, is there anything I can do? You want me to stay up with you?"

Bucky held up his board. "I want to be held, please," he'd written and he frowned over to top at Steve. Steve sighed.

"'Course you do," he said and waved him over. "Come here, you're fine, you're okay." Bucky swam over and hauled himself up on top of Steve's rock and Steve wrapped his arms around him and pulled him close, fitting him against his body like pieces to a puzzle. He situated them both on the pillows he had and Bucky nuzzled his face into Steve's chest desperately. "You're okay, it's not real," Steve said, repeating himself over and over again and rubbing Bucky's back. "You're gonna be fine."

Eventually, Bucky's breathing slowed again and evened out, comforted and asleep again, but Steve stayed up for the rest of the night, thinking about what Bucky had told him.


	28. Chapter Twenty-Seven

Chapter Twenty-Seven

In the morning, Steve had a lot to say to Bucky, and he was tired and emotional and desperate when Bucky yawned and woke slowly next to him.

"Bucky," Steve said, shaking him a little bit. "Bucky, hey, wake up." Bucky looked up at him and pulled himself up a little, smiling. "I wanna say something to you," Steve said and Bucky waited for him patiently. Steve stared into his eyes and swallowed.

"You love me," Steve finally said. "No one else could ever say something like that to me and mean it, but you mean it." Bucky looked at him, confused, and yawned again.

I'm giving up, Steve thought. Before we can even try. Surely this is something worth trying for. Surely, Bucky was worth the pain.

"You'd take on pain and heartbreak and confusion in the effort of keeping me," Steve said. Bucky stretched and reached for his whiteboard.

"Of course," Bucky wrote. "That's what love is about. Are you okay?"

"No," Steve said and he looked down and tears fell. He hated this. "There was something I promised myself that I'd tell you, and then promised myself I'd never tell you."

"You're not making any sense," Bucky wrote.

"I know, okay?" Steve cried. "Cause I waited for you for so long! And I told myself it'd never work out and I would have to wait even longer and it would hurt even more and I better just stop while I was ahead!" Bucky stared at him, silent, waiting. He searched Steve's face, his expression anxious.

"Well?" He finally wrote. "Are you going to explain?"

"Remember when you asked me if I loved you," Steve whispered and Bucky froze. Steve could see him bracing himself again. He nodded slowly. "Well, about that," Steve said. "I lied."

"You _lied_?" Bucky wrote slowly and held it up and Steve nodded. "Why?!"

"Because it'll never work!" Steve cried. "I've tried to keep you and now you're trying to keep me and in the end, we'll both go back to our respective places and never be able to make this permanent."

"So you just gave up?" Bucky wrote. "You just decided that you'd rather let me suffer all alone?"

"I'm not someone you can have!" Steve said. "And vice versa! So you'd suffer anyway, I was just helping you get it out of the way. And Bucky, I suffered, too, okay? I hurt, too."

"You lied to me," Bucky wrote. The look on his face was angry suddenly. Steve didn't know what else to do except to get angry back.

"For a good reason," Steve said, defensive. "But I'm telling you now."

"You're a little late," Bucky wrote. When Steve didn't answer, he dropped the board into the water and dove out, splashing Steve and leaving him alone.

Maybe I should have started with a 'good morning', Steve wondered.


	29. Chapter Twenty-Eight

Chapter Twenty-Eight

Bucky returned late that night. Steve didn't dare go to sleep until he returned, and when he did, Steve watched him gather his board from the sand feet deep in the water and bring it up. Instead of saying anything, however, he only set it on a rock and started to sink back down.

"Hey," Steve called out and reached over, slapping the water. "Are you gonna talk to me or not?" The look Bucky gave him over his shoulder was seething. "So it's the silent treatment, huh?" Bucky glared for a second, and then took his board and Steve almost grinned in victory.

"You can't call it the silent treatment," Bucky wrote. "Because I literally can't talk."

"Stop being a snob, you know what I mean," Steve said. There was quiet for a moment while Bucky carefully dipped his board in the water and began to clean it off, leaning against a rock across the cave and glaring at Steve and the cave ceiling creaked, as though it too couldn't stand the quiet. Bucky did not seem too interested in writing more. Steve looked at him and swallowed. "You oughta come up here with me," he said quietly. Bucky let out a huff and rolled his eyes.

"Not on your life," he wrote and flashed the board at Steve so fast Steve hardly had time to see. Then, he went back to cleaning it off.

"I came clean," Steve said. "I told you what I thought."

"Did you learn a powerful lesson about lying?" Bucky asked and Steve wrinkled his nose.

"You have to understand," Steve said. "You gotta get it, at least a little."

"I don't," Bucky said. "I told you I loved you right from the start, as soon as I even knew how. I let you know in every way I could and you told me you didn't love me back. I had to learn how to be okay with that, thinking that there was no way you'd love me and I was silly to think you might." Bucky turned the board around and rubbed it off with his forearm.

"Well-" Steve started and Bucky cut him off with a sharp hiss. He raised his marker. "Fine," Steve rolled his eyes. "Keep going. Tell me how awful I am."

"I will," Bucky wrote. "I will tell you, because you _were_ awful! You tell me you love me, like suddenly it'll make everything better, like suddenly it all doesn't matter anymore and you're just as innocent as can be and it wasn't okay! You hurt me, and I don't care how much you love me anymore. You're just like all the rest and all humans do is hurt me, so I'm done with all of you."

Steve stared at Bucky and maybe he was jumping to conclusions, but he thought the particular set of Bucky's jaw told him he was right.

"Did you just compare me to Harry?" Steve breathed. "Is that what that was?"

"At least Harry was upfront about his feelings," Bucky wrote. "Harry didn't lie right to my face."

Steve felt hit. The wind was knocked out of him. He stared at Bucky, slackjawed and for that silent while, Bucky set his whiteboard back up and turned his face away from Steve and covered his eyes in the crook of his elbow. Steve looked from the scars on Bucky's tail and back to his hidden face.

"That's what you think of me," he whispered. "I'm on par with the guy that beat you?"

Bucky let out a shaking moan.

"Look at me, would you?" Steve demanded once he'd gotten ahold of himself. His throat was closing up. "Or don't, I guess. I can't ask you to look at someone you hate that much."

Bucky whimpered, but he squeezed tighter into himself and tucked his chin into his chest.

"Are you gonna let me explain, Buck?" Steve asked. Bucky looked at him over the top of his elbow. "I was scared, alright? Because I've lost you a hundred different times in a hundred different ways and I just can't imagine doing it one more time loving you like this. If I didn't… Didn't love you. And you didn't love me. Splitting up again might be easier." Bucky stared at him. "I know it's a crappy excuse. And you can still hate me if you want, but I just didn't want it to hurt anymore. It was selfish. It was dumb. I'm sorry."

"I don't hate you," Bucky wrote, his handwriting shaky. "I didn't mean it."

"You might as well," Steve said. "Cause we can't make this work no matter what and it'd be great if you could be happy to see me go."

"How come all we can do is hurt each other?" Bucky wrote after a while and Steve stared at him.

"I dunno," he said.

That night, Bucky curled up closer to Steve, on a sliver of rock where the water came up and tapered away and Steve scooted closer until they were almost touching, and he pulled his pillow out from under him and offered it to Bucky. Bucky gave him those eyes and then reached over and grabbed his arm and pulled him close, so close both of their heads could fit on one pillow.

"I know you don't hate me," Steve said quietly and Bucky leaned over and pecked his forehead with his lips. Then, in a desperate attempt to communicate, Bucky began tracing letters ever so gently onto the back of Steve's hand.

"I," Steve said. "That's an I. L… O… You love me? Is that what you're trying to say?" Bucky squeezed his eyes shut and nodded. "I love you, too. Geez, that hurts to say, doesn't it?"

Bucky began to trace again.

"T… O… L… D… Told you?" Steve said. Another nod and a quick, weak smile. Steve came closer, close enough to feel Bucky's soft breath, and pressed his forehead against his. "You were right. I guess you were just the stronger of the both of us, to live with your heart wide open for so long."

They fell asleep together for the first time in a long time, and Steve felt as though it hurt. It felt as though he was losing him again, and that he was taking a chunk of his soul with him.


	30. Chapter Twenty-Nine

Chapter Twenty-Nine

Steve woke to Bucky's kisses, on his face and his head and his hands. Bucky had desperate kisses, like he couldn't get enough in during the time he had, and as Steve dizzily came to consciousness, he reached out and stopped him, taking his face in his hands. Bucky looked at him, sitting up on his elbow, and then Steve leaned over and gave him one long kiss on the mouth. When he pulled away, he laughed a little.

"I've been wishing I could do that," he said quietly. "Well, maybe minus the morning breath." Bucky smiled at him a little. "You forgive me, right?" Steve asked. "Cause I'm sorry I lied." Bucky broke away and pushed himself back into the water, heading for his board across the cave. When he got there, he pulled it down and wrote and swam back to Steve to hand it to him.

"I forgave you," the board said. "I forgave you and I love you, but that doesn't mean it hurts any less." Steve bit his lip and nodded.

"Yeah," he said. "I screwed up, Buck." Bucky reached over and took the board back.

"You aren't like Harry," he wrote.

"Thanks," Steve said.

"I could never hate you," Bucky said. Steve looked at him and Bucky frowned down at the ground and Steve pushed himself up and wrapped his arms around Bucky, squeezing him. Bucky squeezed back weakly.

"I love you," Steve choked out. "I love you. I love you." Bucky closed his eyes and nuzzled his face into the crook of Steve's neck and when they pulled away a little, he took his board up.

"Don't leave me," he wrote.

What are we gonna do?" Steve replied wearily and Bucky sucked on his bottom lip and shook his head.

Later, Bucky left and returned with another sponge for Steve and they spent the new few days trying to figure something out for the two of them. Bucky cried sometimes, and it broke Steve's heart so much that more often than not, he'd end up blinking back tears too, and they couldn't seem to pull together anything.

"What if you build a house on the beach?" Bucky wrote.

"What if you go back and forth from a pool to the ocean?" Steve asked.

"What if you live out here on an island?" Bucky countered.

"What if you build an underwater tunnel into town?" Steve said. Bucky stared.

"An underwater tunnel? Into town?" He repeated and Steve snickered a little.

"It sounds dumb when you put it that way," he said.

"It sounded dumb when you said it the first time," Bucky rolled his eyes, but he smiled. Then, "Are you going to sail again?" Steve stopped and considered this.

"I really don't know," he said quietly. "My ship is probably somewhere in that graveyard you showed me earlier. And all my crew are dead."

"Then what else will you do?" Bucky asked and Steve shrugged.

"I don't know." He looked at Bucky and let out a long breath. "That ship was ours, Buck. You and me, we loved it like we'd built it ourselves." Bucky listened. "Everything's different now."

"If you stayed here," Bucky wrote. "You'd never have to go back and do anything again. I'd do everything for you; I'd get everything you need, I'd take care of you. You wouldn't even have to worry." Steve looked at him and a teasing smile made its way to his face.

"And who was the one bragging about not dreaming I could stay?" Steve said but Bucky didn't laugh, or even pretend to like he did sometimes. Instead, he dipped his board into the water, melancholy, and wiped his letters away.

"I guess I want to keep you as much as you wanted to keep me," he wrote solemnly.

"This whole endeavor would be so much easier if we were both the same species," Steve replied and Bucky finally cracked a small smile.

"Whoops," Bucky wrote. "My bad." Steve laughed and kissed him.

"Yeah, tell me about it," he murmured into Bucky's lips.


	31. Chapter Thirty

Chapter Thirty

For the next few days, Steve focused on making up for his mistake. He did everything he could to make Bucky happy. Bucky loved to be held and touched and kissed and so Steve made sure to do it often, greeting him with kisses down his neck and interlocking fingers, meeting the webs he found there gently. He put his arms around his shoulders and ran his fingertips across his scales carefully. He brushed his hair back and smiled at him and loved him. He was rewarded with the way Bucky glowed, the way he blossomed when he was so loved. Bucky smiled so much more often and Steve was happy to see the way he presented himself to Steve excitedly, pulling himself up next to him and snuggling up near him, eager to be spoken to. Steve thought sometimes that Bucky's favorite part was the very nature of being told that he deserved love. Steve didn't know if he could bare to leave him, especially as his day of leaving drew nearer.

He was getting better, Bucky had said. He was healing quickly and soon, he'd be ready to return to land. Steve found himself dreading the day.

However, as it turned out, he didn't need to worry because the next day, when Bucky went out to find Steve something to eat and possibly another oxygen tank to get him back to the beach, the cave ceiling gave out.

He hardly had time to try and get away as chunks of rock fell and pinned him down.

His last thoughts were of Bucky.

They never had a chance anyway.

END OF BOOK TWO


	32. Chapter Thirty-One

BOOK THREE

Chapter Thirty-One

Bucky tore through the rocks as fast as he could, digging frantically. His mind was filled with panic and Steve's name, but he wasn't finding anything. He sobbed and screamed into the water and clawed at the rocks until his hands were bloody, but he never found Steve's body. It was as though he'd disappeared.

Bucky had heard Steve talk about grief, but he supposed he'd never understood it until now. Now maybe he knew a little more about what Steve had gone through, what he had felt every time he had to let Bucky go. Maybe now Bucky understood why Steve was so afraid of losing him again, of loving him again. Grief was destructive and it was tearing Bucky to pieces.

Bucky felt as though he screamed for days.

When he could think clearly, hours later, slumped in the sand beside the heap of rubble and dirty water where he'd last left Steve, Bucky made a list of possible outcomes. It was possible, of course, that Steve had made it. It was possible that he'd made it to the surface in time and hadn't been hit by any rocks, but where would he have gone? He'd need Bucky's help to make it all the way back to shore, which was a long way away, and there was no where else for him to be except treading water just yards above Bucky's head, which he wasn't. And even if he had somehow made it, who was to say he hadn't been attacked and killed by something on the way back? Bucky supposed he could have been picked up by a ship, but that seemed pretty unlikely.

And of course, there was the possibility that the falling rocks had crushed and killed him, but Bucky had been digging all day and couldn't even find his body. All he had was the taste of blood in the water and a bad feeling in his gut.

There was a third possibility that Bucky entertained for a minute or so and that was that Steve might have been saved by the ocean in the same way that Bucky had, and that he'd turn around one day and find Steve there with him again, but with a tail and fangs and scales. Bucky longed for it, he wished with all his heart, but he knew this was the least possible fate of all of them. He was dreaming of legends that might not even be true because Bucky himself was hardly any proof and a magical life-saving ocean was much harder to believe in than the apparent reality of Steve's death. Especially while that taste and smell of blood and flesh lingered in the water, turning Bucky's stomach sickly.

His Steve was dead and he'd never see him again.

He dug halfheartedly at the pile for a few more days, digging out his now-broken whiteboard and a few markers, and when he reached the sand at the bottom, he finally gave up. He hugged the pieces of his board to his chest, his only momento of his time with Steve, and left, unable to look anymore at the place his beautiful, wonderful, perfect Steve had died.


	33. Chapter Thirty-Two

Chapter Thirty-two

Months passed for Bucky completely alone. As much as he tried not to let life fall back into that monotonous, mindless routine, it was hard not to. He had no one to talk to and share his thoughts with and no one to break up the rut he fell into.

Kill. Eat. Kill. Eat. Kill. Eat.

Sometimes, he would look at the whiteboard pieces, which he kept, and he'd cry. Sometimes he'd write something on them for no one to read and then wipe it off a minute later.

So he was rather caught off guard when he saw Steve again.

He was a few yards away, looking almost exactly like he had before he'd been killed except with a siren-like tail and Bucky had to freeze and stare for a while, unsure he was really seeing what he was seeing. This wasn't real. He wasn't here. Bucky couldn't be so lucky as to get his Steve back the way Steve had gotten him. It couldn't be true.

Except it was.

Bucky propelled himself forward and tackled Steve, wrapping his arms around him and kissing him and sobbing. He was so concerned with Steve and yet not concerned enough with him so that when he felt Steve pushing him away, he was surprised. He pulled back a little, realizing that Steve might be just like him. Steve might not know who Bucky was anymore and he looked up and met his eyes. Steve was not looking back with any sort of good expression. He was staring at Bucky angrily, his eyes both enraged and confused, and he had his arms up before him like he had to protect himself. Bucky studied his face desperately.

Steve, he was thinking. Steve Steve Steve Steve.

Bucky wanted to touch him again, wanted to hold him again, wanted to kiss his every scale, but the look Steve was giving him held him back.

Steve gave him one more angry once over and then turned around and started swimming away. Bucky caught up as fast as he could, swimming alongside him, staring at him.

Don't go away, he thought frantically. Don't leave me, stay. Stay!

Steve threw another angry glare over his shoulder and swam faster.

What are you doing? Bucky thought. Where are you going? We'll be together, we'll be the _same_! I don't have to be alone anymore!

Then, after a few more minutes of high speed chase, Steve whirled around and threw up his hands again. He seemed at a loss and Bucky wanted to touch more of him, wanted to throw his arms around his neck again and cup his cheeks in his hands and kiss him all over, but he couldn't. Instead, he took one of Steve's hands as gently as he could and kissed his fingers. He noticed secondarily that Steve's hand probably should be like Bucky's, but it wasn't. He didn't even have claws, but Bucky was too distracted and shocked by Steve's presence to realize what that might mean. Steve yanked his hand away from Bucky's mouth and stared at him, wide-eyed and confused.

I have to talk to you, Bucky thought. I have to find some way to talk to you. He took Steve's hands in both of his now and started trying to tug him back, trying to take him back towards where Bucky's collection of dry erase markers grew mold, but Steve ripped his hands away again. He mouthed something through the water that Bucky couldn't read, but his angry posture said it all. _Leave me alone!_

Forgive me, Steve, Bucky thought. But you'll thank me one day.

He wrapped his arms around Steve's tiny torso, pinning his arms to his sides and holding him tightly, and began to swim him back. Steve went berserk and fought back as fiercely as he could, pumping his tail and throwing his head back. Bucky fought him, holding his arms in a grip Steve couldn't wriggle out of, and Steve screamed and tried to bite at his hands but all he got between his teeth was water and he screamed again. And of course, Bucky was significantly stronger and bigger than Steve and he could handle him, but Steve put up such a fight that getting him back was difficult.

Bucky continued to notice strange things about new Steve the longer he held him, like how he couldn't feel more patches of scales on Steve's skin and how Steve's body was hot and warm instead of fishy and cold like Bucky's. He wasn't sure what to make of it.

Bucky had to find some way to stop Steve, make him sit and listen for a moment, so he brought him to the edge of a lagoon several miles away and threw Steve up on a rock like he had when Steve had legs, relieved to finally stop the fighting. While Steve sat there on his butt under the sun, confused and dripping and disoriented but still teeming with fury, Bucky turned around to retrieve his long forgotten board and markers and bring them back. He had so much to say! So much to ask and to talk about and he didn't even know where to begin and he dove back into the water as fast as he could and came back, whiteboard pieces in hand. But when he popped out of the water in front of the rocks, he was finally able to take in Steve's entire body and he froze. He was baffled. He felt ill all of a sudden.

Steve was pretty and pink and warm and still so, so human. His flesh wasn't cold and fishy and peppered in scales, like Bucky's, but was instead entirely human. He had close cropped hair and soft, round, human-like fingernails and square teeth behind pink lips. He had a small, pretty tail with decorative, colorful scales that didn't invade into his torso but instead stopped in a neat line around his waist. Bucky's mouth went dry as he examined him up and down, comparing himself and Steve. Steve didn't have poison built into his body. Steve didn't have dark scars on fishy skin and scales missing. Steve didn't have fangs or webbed hands. Bucky's heart felt squeezed.

You're beautiful, he thought in disbelief. Why… Why are you so beautiful and human and perfect? He almost couldn't believe his eyes. You're not a siren, he thought. You're something else.

Blame crashed down on Bucky like a wave. He didn't understand why Steve was something so rare and beautiful and he was something so… So ugly. And scary. And he didn't want to be that way. He must have done something wrong, he must be something bad for the ocean to have made him a monster and Steve an angel. He just didn't understand.

He didn't resent Steve for it. How could he resent the perfection of the love of his life? How could he resent Steve being alive? And beautiful and healthy and with him? He didn't resent him in the slightest, but he had to admit he was a little caught off guard. He was a little shaken. He might have been a smidgen jealous.

"What are you doing?" Steve demanded outloud and Bucky was stunned. He could _talk_? "Who are you? What do you want with me?" Bucky could feel a lump rising in his chest. Steve was just so human.

"Please give me a moment," he wrote on his board. "I'll be right back."

Overwhelmed, Bucky dove back into the water to swim away as fast as he could. Once he was just far enough that Steve couldn't see, he sunk down to the sand at the floor of the ocean and sat there, breathing in and shaking and covering his face with his hands. He moaned a little and stared at the sand underneath him, hugging himself, overcome with self-hatred. All he could see when he closed his eyes was Steve's pretty, slender, human-like body with his warm skin and human face. And then he saw his own body, as inhuman as he could possibly be, scarred and scaled and webbed and clawed. His throat closed up and sobs lost in the thickness of the water wracked his shoulders.

This was supposed to be happy, he thought to himself. Reuniting with Steve was supposed to be a good thing.

He was forced to get up when Steve zipped through the water above him, making a break for it as fast as he could, and Bucky swam up to meet him and tackled him down again and brought him back.


	34. Chapter Thirty-Three

Chapter Thirty-Three

"STEVE," Bucky wrote in thick letters on the board, bracing it against his lap underneath the water and he held it up in Steve's face once Steve was beached and trapped again. Steve stared at the board and then back at Bucky, making a face. Bucky expected him to say something more like he had earlier, but Steve remained silent.

Bucky took the board back and wrote more. "YOU. ARE. STEVE." Again, Steve made no response and only gave Bucky that confused face. Bucky sucked in his bottom lip.

"You can still read, right?" He asked next. This time, Steve nodded a little slowly. When Bucky busied himself wiping the board off, Steve made a lunge for the water, pushing himself off and taking a chance, but he couldn't go as far as he thought he could and he fell on his face against the rock. Bucky looked up to see him sprawled there, trying to right himself, struggling, and winced.

"You have to stay here," he said next. "Just for a while, just so we can talk." Steve wiped blood off his face with the back of his hand and glared hatefully at Bucky and Bucky felt his heart break a little. He was desperate. He was so desperate.

"I'm not talking to you," Steve said bitterly. "I want you to let me go." His voice was just the same, Bucky realized. He sounded like nothing had even changed, except for the fact that he now spoke to Bucky hatefully. Bucky had heard him be mean and spiteful and miserable and angry, but he'd never heard him be hateful. It hurt.

Bucky handed a whiteboard half and a marker to Steve, pushing it up next to him.

"You could write," Bucky said, although he knew it was pointless to even suggest. Steve, of course, turned up his nose.

"Do you remember me?" Bucky asked first, bracing himself for the no. It was okay, he told himself. The same thing that happened to him must have happened to Steve. It's fine. They'd be fine. He told himself that over and over and over, still so overwhelmed with emotions and possibilities to think straight. He wasn't even sure how to react. Part of him wanted to cry again. In fact, most of him did.

But Steve didn't answer and he started trying to get himself back into the water again, trying to push himself off the rock, and Bucky reached up and shoved him back. He wrote more as fast as he could.

"No!" He said. "I'm sorry, I love you, but you HAVE to stay. Until you say something to me, you can consider yourself beached." Steve glared harder and gave a pitiful hiss. "Hiss all you want, you don't scare me," Bucky added. "Now answer my question. Please."

Steve looked back behind him at the pen and board and took them up, taking a few seconds every so often to look up at Bucky and growl hatefully. Although Bucky himself had suggested it, he wasn't sure why Steve would rather use the boards than speak. Speaking seemed so much easier. Bucky wished he could speak. If only his singing could be used for communicating, instead of just hunting. While Bucky thought these things, Steve put his pen on the whiteboard and started drawing.

He didn't draw letters. Bucky thought at first that he was still experimenting with the ink and let him for a while, but when it became clear that he knew exactly what the pen did and he just wasn't writing words, Bucky became frustrated. It wasn't that he'd rather write. He was probably _mocking_ him.

"What are you doing?" He wrote. "You're gonna black out the whole board, you're wasting ink, it's not easy to get that!" Steve glanced up and Bucky could swear he grinned a little, pleased with himself about having irritated his captor. "Steve!" Bucky wrote, batting at him with his board piece, but Steve leaned away. Once he'd blacked out the entire board, he drew words into it with his fingertip and Bucky was relieved for a half a second until he saw that the message was two rather unsavory words and Steve also felt it necessary to drive home his point and give Bucky his middle finger.

This clearly isn't going to be easy, Bucky thought.

While Steve colored again, Bucky explained everything. He told him about how they once knew each other and how he meant the world to Bucky and he probably didn't remember anymore but Bucky could help him and he wasn't sure if Steve actually read any of his words, but he wrote them all.

When he was finished writing, he swam up to Steve's rock closer, hugging the edge and looking up and Steve looked down at him with a hateful expression, but Bucky didn't want to take his eyes off him. Part of him was amazed that it was _Steve_ and _Steve_ was here with him again and everything would be better, but another part of him was amazed about him period. He was amazed with his pretty scaleless skin and his pretty human hands and his pretty glittery tail and Bucky thought he could stare all day. He didn't look like that. Why didn't he look like that?

Finally, Bucky wrote again.

"What are you?" He asked, although he doubted he'd get an answer. Steve only looked at him and rolled his eyes for a second time. "I'm serious," Bucky added, but Steve ignored him again. "You look like something out of a fairytale." No acknowledgement from Steve. "You're beautiful." Nothing. "Why don't you look like me?" Bucky added in small words and Steve glared at him now. He stuck his tongue out of his mouth and his eyes went up and down Bucky, taking in his tail, colored like some sort of oil spill, to his scars, which were ugly and obvious, to his face, where tiny, soft scales crept up and invaded his jawline and sharp teeth hid behind his lips. Steve made a disgusted face and Bucky wished he could disappear.

He brought his fingertips to his lips and blew Steve the smallest and saddest of kisses and Steve scoffed and turned away. So much for that.


	35. Chapter Thirty-Four

Chapter Thirty-Four

Several days passed this way. The rocks were large enough to keep silent Steve beached and Bucky stayed with him day and night, laying up against his rock, provided that Steve didn't push him away, and watching him run all his markers dry with his coloring. He ought to make some sort of supplies run and find more writing supplies to share between them, but he was afraid that if he turned his back on Steve, he'd come back to find him gone. He didn't want to lose him again, so he made do with what he had.

It wasn't like Steve read what he wrote anyway, so it didn't matter.

He knew he'd have to do something though when Steve's stomach grumbled for the hundredth time and Steve was beginning to look rather distressed.

"I'll get you something," Bucky wrote while Steve glared at him. "What do you want?" Steve shrugged, still adamantly silent. "Do you eat…" Bucky's pen hovered over his board, but Steve was staring at him, so he went on. "Do you eat fish? Or something else?" Steve just looked away and let out a long breath. "If I go, will you stay put?" Bucky wrote and Steve refused to answer, so Bucky just set his writing materials down next to him on the rock and sunk back into the water.

Finding and catching fish was so easy it wasn't even sport and Bucky came back in minutes with five dead fish in his hands, uncertain of how Steve would respond. He remembered doing this once before to return to Steve's sarcastic disdain, but he couldn't say no now. Or rather, wouldn't. He refused to communicate at all. And Bucky wondered if he ought to bring back something like what _he_ ate, but Steve wasn't a siren. That was all Bucky had been able to conclude in their long and silent days together, that whatever Steve was, he wasn't like Bucky. So he probably ate fish. At least, Bucky hoped.

Steve was still there when Bucky returned and pushed the fish up onto the rock for him expectantly. Steve sifted through what he'd been brought before picking one up and biting into it almost delicately. Bucky was reminded of the vicious way sirens, no, _he_, hunted and ate. It was gruesome and in comparison to Steve's human-sized, square-toothed bites, almost darkly comical.

"Is that alright?" Bucky wrote and Steve ignored him, slowly polishing off each fish like he had all the time in the world, peeling back scales and flinging them into the water, like he hadn't been so fiercely hungry earlier. "I'm going to assume this is fine," Bucky wrote again and Steve rolled his eyes.

That night, as Bucky was falling asleep with Steve curled up on the rock above him, Steve spoke.

"Your story's bullshit," he said out loud and Bucky was so startled he breathed in a mouthful of water and choked. But this time, Steve didn't help him, only looked at him coldly, and he had to remind himself how to breathe.

He scrambled for his board.

"What?" He scrawled. Steve straightened his back and looked away. The moonlight shone off his scales, turning them a distractingly beautiful light purple and Bucky studied him intently.

"I don't know you," Steve said.

"Are you sure?" Bucky wrote.

"I'd remember something like you," Steve said. "So your stupid story about us being human is just that. Stupid and a story."

"It's true," Bucky wrote mournfully.

"I don't have anything to say to you," Steve said. "I don't even know what you want." There was a pause and Bucky lowered his board. He didn't know what to say.

"Are you going to let me go free?" Steve said and Bucky looked away. "Well?" Steve said. Bucky tensed up, unsure how he wanted to answer. Steve let out an angry breath. "I know how it is with you sirens," he said accusingly. "Is this a new thing for you guys? Catching mermen? Are you gonna kill me when you're done playing around?"

"Mermen aren't real," Bucky wrote slowly.

"You mean mermen are practically _extinct_," Steve replied. "No thanks to you."

"I've never killed someone like you," Bucky wrote. "I've never even _seen_ someone like you."

"Yeah, well, we keep to ourselves pretty well," Steve said. "You sirens like to kill us just for fun, after all."

"I would never," Bucky wrote and Steve only glared. "Your name is Steve," Bucky continued slowly after a brief pause. "We used to know each other. I don't want to kill you."

"I've never known you," Steve fired back. "Never! How do you even expect me to trust you? You've taken me prisoner!" Bucky frowned.

"'Prisoner' is a pretty negative word," he wrote.

"You're the weirdest siren I've ever met," Steve said. "And negative or not, its what you've done."

"I just had to talk to you!" Bucky was in the middle of writing. "You don't know me anymore and-"

"I don't believe that you're not going to kill me," Steve continued and Bucky looked up, interrupted from his writing. "You attacked me! And you sirens are all the same. You're all awful and manipulative and heartless. That's what makes you sirens in the first place." Bucky held his pen still hovering above the words he'd been writing, looking up and listening to Steve. He had picked up his pen, that was usually Steve's cue to stop. And he would have, had things been normal. Steve always waited patiently for him to stop writing. At least, he used to. Bucky supposed he used to care about what he had to say.

He finished his sentence mournfully and held it up.

"You don't know me anymore and I had to make you stop and listen somehow. I'm sorry."

"The more you write, the crazier you sound," Steve accused.

This was supposed to be happy, Bucky thought again. He let out a heavy sigh and began writing. If Steve talked over him again, he didn't care. He'd finish what he had to say.

"I know you don't believe me," he started. "But you and me knew each other in another life, where we were both human. And then we died and now this is who we are. And I love you very much." Steve scoffed.

"I'm not sure which part of your story is more unbelievable, the part where we're human or the part where you claim to love someone," Steve said and Bucky sucked in a breath.

"I have feelings, you know," he wrote furiously. "I'm not this monstrous killer you seem to think I am. I'm a siren, that doesn't mean I'm automatically evil." Steve rolled his eyes. "Can you stop being an asshole for five minutes?" Bucky demanded. "Please?"

"I've seen things like you rip people apart," Steve said. "You rip each _other_ apart if you can get the chance! You-"

"I didn't ask to be a siren!" Bucky interrupted Steve, shoving his board in his face. "I didn't choose this! All I said was 'please don't let me die because I still have things to do' and this is what the ocean did to me! I didn't ask to be made into a sea monster!"

Steve looked at him over the board and his face was unreadable. He was silent while Bucky wrote more.

"You're so beautiful," he wrote. "And I've missed you so much. Please don't ruin this for us before we even have a chance to make it work." He looked up at Steve pleadingly. "Give me a chance here." Steve was quiet for a moment.

"Alright," he said finally. "Well if your story's true, why don't I remember any of it?"

"It was another life," Bucky wrote. "When you started this one, you had a clean slate. I did, too. I only know everything because I died first and I knew human you. Now the same thing had happened to you that happened to me." He hesitated. "Well, not exactly the same thing. You're like something from a fairytale."

"Sure," Steve said casually. "So, say your story's true. Where's your proof? How do I believe you?"

"I don't have any proof," Bucky realized. "All I have is what I remember." His heart sank. I'm the only one left to remember our story and I don't even know all of the details, he thought. Steve stared at him.

"Let me go right now," he finally said and Bucky sucked in his bottom lip. He shook his head. Steve glared. "I _demand _you let me go," he said and Bucky squeezed his eyes shut and shook his head again. "Are you just going to hold me here forever?" Steve cried. Bucky honestly didn't know. He couldn't do that, never, but he could keep Steve for a little while, surely. Just a day or two more. And then, maybe Steve would see how much he was loved and he would stay. Everything would work out and they could finally, _finally_ be together. Steve waited a while to respond and Bucky opened his eyes back up and looked at him. He had his arms crossed and he was turned away.

"I'm not the bad guy," Bucky wrote slowly on his board. It must be unconvincing. Anyone looking in would say the ugly siren holding the pretty merman captive was the evil one and thinking about it outside himself like that made Bucky hate himself even more. Steve glanced at his board and looked away silently. "Talk to me?" Bucky said. "Please?"

"Let. Me. Go," Steve said back and didn't turn around to look at Bucky and Bucky sunk back into the water mournfully, watching Steve over the top of the water. Steve curled back up on his rock and flicked the tip of his tail and Bucky hugged himself and stared.


	36. Chapter Thirty-Five

Chapter Thirty-Five

Steve waited all night, but finally, the siren sunk back into the water and curled up on the sand below him. Steve was cautious as he heaved himself to the edge of the rock and leaned over the edge. The water was right there, just inches away from his dangling fingertips. He had to enter it gently, so the sounds of his splash wouldn't wake the siren. Steve couldn't take another chase and capture. It was too humiliating. And not to mention, it left him stranded here at the siren's mercy _again_.

Steve pushed himself further a little more until now his whole torso was dangling over the edge and his hands were submerged in ocean water up to his wrists and he pumped his tail desperately to give himself that extra push.

Steve fell back into the water with, luckily, only a minor splash, and he righted himself and took a deep breath of water and slicked his hair back and spared a glance down at the siren, just too close for comfort. His eyes were still closed. His chest still rose and fell evenly. Steve celebrated in his head. He hadn't gotten this far in days!

Steve turned and pumped his tail again, harder, taking off into the water. He was so much smaller than the siren, and so much weaker. The siren's tail was frighteningly powerful and fast and he could cover miles in minutes. Steve could barely catch himself lunch if the fish was too fast and he tried not to let himself feel jealous. It's not that he would _want_ to be a siren. But he sure wouldn't mind the strength that came with it.

Steve expected the siren to catch up with him any second now and he spared another glance behind himself to see nothing but empty, dark water. He was escaping! He was really getting out! Steve twirled through the water gleefully.

He didn't have much time to celebrate, however, because this was the ocean at night time and it was dangerous. All sorts of predators lurked in the darkness, things Steve could never fight off, things that could snap him in two if they wanted. But sirens, they were certainly the worst and he'd already escaped one! Maybe, Steve considered, he was lucky.

He had to find somewhere to duck inside of for the night. A hiding place, a cave, a crevice, something. He didn't recognize anything around him. He'd never been to this part of the ocean before. He could hardly even see through the dark.

It took him what felt like a long time, but finally Steve found a dark, hidden corner of the ocean and stowed himself away, crammed uncomfortably against rock and coral, and waited there until the sun rose.

In the morning, he tried to orient himself and find his way back. He had a nice little slice of ocean all to himself somewhere around here. A cozy hiding spot, easy-to-catch fish nearby. It was safe. But he hardly knew where he was now and he swam in circles trying to figure it out. Should he retrace his steps and risk seeing that siren again to find his way back? Should he keep swimming until something looked familiar? Should he call it quits and try to find another safe spot?

He wasn't allowed much time to make a decision, however, because something was coming out of the depths of the ocean and he could see it out of the corner of his eye and panicked. The shape grew larger and larger and Steve stared, rooted to the spot with a sense of dread clawing in his stomach. As he began to make out the shape of a shark, he began to force himself to move. He turned quickly, the water bubbling around him tumultuously, and began swimming away as fast as he could, blind with fear. He looked behind himself once and he could see the shark clearly now, the tip of it's nose and it's black eyes. He let out a gasp through his mouth and turned back around.

Steve didn't know where he was going, or what he'd do. He couldn't fight a shark! And there was no way he could outswim one. If he could lose it, maybe, or hide from it? But that was only if he could find somewhere to hide before the shark caught up to him.

I'm gonna die, I'm gonna die, I'm gonna die, Steve thought frantically over and over and over as he led the shark as fast as he could in tight circles and around corners. Then, in front of him came another shape, headed straight for him, and Steve's eyes widened and he started frantically trying to backpedal. But behind him, the shark! Steve looked back and forth from the shark to… He squinted. Was that the siren from earlier?

The siren whizzed past him and Steve whirled around, propelled partially by the power of the water parting around the siren, and watched him tackle the shark. Steve stared, horrified, and the shark seemed equally afraid and swam away as soon as it could. Even the _shark_ knew it was outmatched, and when the siren turned back around to face Steve, Steve backed away. Would he be angry that Steve had left? Would he take this opportunity to eat Steve's heart right out of his chest? If Steve couldn't face a shark, he _certainly _couldn't face a siren.

But he didn't look angry. He was giving Steve an expression Steve recognized from earlier, a pitiful and heartbroken look, like a kicked puppy. Steve stared, still tense and ready at any second to swim away again.

The siren made one miniscule move forward and Steve jumped back. Carefully, the siren lifted his hands up in a peace gesture and Steve looked back and forth from his strange, water hand to his real one. The siren looked at him imploringly.

Maybe he's not _that_ bad, Steve thought to himself cautiously. I mean, he hasn't done anything really bad so far, except for beaching me. Steve made a face at the thought. He saved me just now, and he even gave me a name. He just seems… Weird.

Slowly, Steve brought himself just a little closer and the siren seemed to take that as a gesture of acceptance. A grin spread across his face and Steve flinched away a little at the sight of his filed teeth, but the siren didn't notice. He was too busy assaulting Steve with excitement, wrapping his arms around him too tightly and spinning him around in the water. Steve's eyes bugged and he thought he might vomit and then the siren started kissing him, pressing fast pecks all over his head and face. Steve sputtered and started trying to push him off.

Quit it! He thought. Geez, what is _with_ you?

The siren answered his thoughts with another kiss right on the tip of his nose and Steve stared. When he pushed again, the siren reluctantly let go and Steve rubbed his nose with his palm spitefully, like he could rub the kiss off.

The siren was still looking at him like he was some sort of angel and then raised his hands. With one, he mimed writing on the palm of the other and Steve rolled his eyes.

The siren raised his hands again, as though to ask, wait here? Steve nodded curtly and the siren burst back out at top speed, leaving Steve in a flurry of bubbles. The bubbles had barely cleared by the time the siren reappeared, his weird writing materials in his hands and he looked like he might write something, but Steve ripped them away first and tore off the cap of his pen with his teeth.

"I didn't need your help," he wrote. He'd meant to say thank you, but he supposed this was pretty much the same thing. He crammed the board back into the siren's hands and the siren fumbled with them for a moment.

"Course not," he wrote back. "You had it totally under control. After all, the shark would have to wear out at some point of time."

Steve tore the board away again, angry about the teasing smile on the siren's stupid face.

"Don't think this means I'm going to forgive you or anything," he wrote next, rubbing out the siren's words with his elbow. He wondered if these pens were supposed to write underwater. The ink was fading, but the siren didn't seem to care.

"Forgive me for what?" The siren asked. With every time Steve had to take the board back out of his hands and write again, the angrier he felt. This was stupid!

"For holding me captive, you-" Steve hesitated when he couldn't seem to think of the perfect insult, and the siren took the board back again.

"Oh," he wrote next and he grinned up at Steve. "Sorry."

Steve ripped the board back again, but he couldn't think of anything extra to say. He just knew he didn't want the siren to have the last word. So instead, he dropped the board and pen and let them sink and the siren looked down, eyes wide, and went to retrieve them, and while he did, Steve began to swim away again.

The siren caught back up to him in minutes, swimming quickly along beside and writing as best as he could.

"Where are you going?" He asked. Steve rolled his eyes.

Away from you, he thought.

But in all reality, he had absolutely no idea where he was going.

"I'll come with you," the siren continued. "I'll protect you."

Steve ignored him.

"I'll be your bodyguard!" The siren wrote and Steve reached over and knocked the board out of his hands again, but the siren fumbled and caught it before it fell. "We could be happy!" He wrote and finally, Steve stopped and took the board again.

"I don't need a bodyguard!" He wrote, pressing the tip of the felt pen into the board with too much fierceness, so ink floated out of it and darkened the water around them. The siren tried to wave the ink away with his hands and only ended up getting the blackness caught in the tips of his water fingers. "Go away!" Steve added.

Although the siren looked hurt, he wasn't deterred. Steve didn't wait to see what he wrote in response, but when he swam away without him, the siren caught up.

Steve led him around the ocean, hoping to lose him and maybe find another good hiding spot, and the siren was annoyingly chipper. He swam circles around Steve, up and down, and once, he swam on his back directly underneath Steve for a good thirty minutes, writing various versions of 'I love you' on his board and sticking them in Steve's face. It was, at best, irritating.

Steve couldn't help but compare this siren to others he'd known and seen and the way he'd always thought he should respond to them. After all, everything else ran from them, so they must be the worst monsters the ocean had to offer, right? The sirens Steve had seen seemed vicious and brutal. They were more animal than anything else and they hissed and growled and spat and clawed. They took malicious pleasure in drowning human beings and hunting other creatures just for the kill. They were each about three hundred pounds of muscle and teeth and hate. They didn't save mermen, or kiss them on the nose, or look up at them from the edge of the water with pleading eyes. They didn't use their hands to write sweet things, they used them to kill.

Steve pressed his mouth together, annoyed, as the siren held up his board again.

"Where are we going?" He wrote and smiled innocently over the words.

There must be something wrong with this one, Steve decided.


	37. Chapter Thirty-Six

Chapter Thirty-Six

They'd been swimming for hours and Steve still hadn't spotted anywhere good to rest for the night. The whiteboard in his face every few minutes didn't help. He certainly wasn't near where he used to be and he realized after a while that he really was using the siren as a bodyguard. With him next to Steve, Steve could go anywhere he wanted without worry. He was like insurance. Nothing would dare attack Steve with weird whiteboard siren doing his far too energetic circles around him.

Well, whatever, Steve thought. I guess I'm not gonna complain. Not too much, at least.

That's when a small cave caught his eye and Steve felt relief wash over him. Finally! A place to stop and sit down! He swam towards it with renewed vigor, but before he could go in, the siren blocked the entrance and held his arms out. Steve peered over his shoulder at what looked like a perfectly fine place to stop.

"No, wait," the siren wrote quickly. "I just decided caves are a bad idea and I don't want to take you in here."

Steve gave him an annoyed face. _Take_ me in there? Steve thought. You aren't 'taking' me anywhere, I picked this spot.

"They're dangerous!" The siren wrote. "These things cave in all the time, you know."

This is stupid, Steve thought, and he started to try and push past the siren, but he was shoved back. He glared and took the board.

"I just want to lay down for a few hours!" He wrote angrily. "What's wrong with this cave?"

"Unsafe," the siren wrote back.

"Liar," Steve replied and then the siren's expression hardened.

"You aren't going in here period," he wrote.

"Then what am I supposed to do?" Steve wrote and threw his hands up.

"You could sleep here, just right here," the siren said, pointing down at the sand below them. "I'll stay up and watch out for you."

"And I just trust you?" Steve asked and the siren bit down gently on his bottom lip with sharp, pointed teeth, and nodded a little.

"Bodyguard, remember?" He wrote slowly and Steve rolled his eyes.

But really… What else was he supposed to do? Steve glance down and eyed the sand. If a siren didn't want him going into a cave, then there was nothing he could do about it, and he wasn't going to die on this proverbial hill.

Giving up, Steve sunk down to the sand and curled himself up tightly beside the rock at the mouth of the cave.

After a second of thought, he reached up for the board and the siren passed it down to him.

"Are you going to drag me back to that rock?" He asked and the siren sunk down next to him in the sand. He watched his shoulders rise and fall and then he shook his head. "Why not? You seemed to like keeping me helpless."

The siren took the board now.

"No, it wasn't like that," he wrote. "Please, don't think that."

What else am I supposed to think? Steve thought spitefully.

"I felt bad about it, I did," the siren continued. "But I told you before, I was just at a loss. You would have left me otherwise. And I'm sorry. Really, Steve." The siren looked up at him and held his eyes. "Really. I'm sorry." Steve let out a fast breath of water. He wasn't sure he was ready to forgive just yet. The siren went on. "I don't want to make you feel like you have to _escape_ from me. I don't want you to be a prisoner. I want you to be my friend."

Steve took the board now and glared at the siren.

"You really don't know how to make friends," he wrote angrily. "Tip number one is don't fricking beach them and keep them captive and cram some story about humans down their throats."

The siren gazed at him sheepishly. He took the board back now slowly.

"You can't tell me you would have just willingly stopped and talked to me, though," the siren wrote. "I didn't have much of a choice. You already thought I was a monster. I had to make you listen."

Steve ground his teeth back and forth.

"Maybe you're right," he wrote back. "But maybe you should also take into consideration other people's feelings. Maybe I didn't _want _to listen. Maybe what I want is just as important as what you want and you can't just force yourself on me like that and expect me to just thank you later."

When the siren read this, he put his face in his hands and sat there for a few minutes, ashamed, until Steve prodded him again with the board.

"You wanna apologize one more time?" He'd written.

"I guess made a pretty bad first impression," he responded.

You think? Steve thought.

"It's hard remembering that this is your first impression," the siren continued, his shoulders slumping. "It's hard remembering that you don't love me anymore."

Steve frowned at him. Oh, boo hoo. Cry me an ocean.

"But I'm sorry," the siren finished. He looked up at Steve. "I'm really, truly, sorry. I didn't have the right to _make _you listen."

Steve took the board back one more time, feeling his eyes begin to droop with exhaustion. "You're damn right," he wrote. "And don't think you're off the hook yet because this conversation isn't over and I'm not finished with you. When I wake up tomorrow, you better be right here wide awake because I'm gonna rip you a new one."

The siren smiled weakly and gave him a crisp salute. Steve relaxed onto the sand and shot the siren a warning glare before closing his eyes and falling into a really well-needed rest.

He dreamed about having legs, but he didn't remember it when he woke up.


	38. Chapter Thirty-Seven

Chapter Thirty-Seven

That morning, the siren surprised him with gifts. There waiting for him in front of his face when he woke were a few dead fish, held down from floating away with a few pretty seashells and rocks. Steve sat up and picked up one of the seashells and examined it. The siren was waiting dutifully in front of him, stretched out across the sand on his belly, curling his tail up above him absentmindedly.

Steve didn't want the siren to know how hungry he was, so he tried to eat the fish slowly.

"What are the shells for?" He wrote, sliding the board over to himself across the sand and then sliding it back.

"Presents," the siren wrote back.

"What am I supposed to do with them?" Steve asked and the siren stopped, seemingly stumped by this.

"I dunno," he wrote. "I guess just look at them. They don't do anything."

"Then why did you get them?" Steve asked. He bit into the side of a fish while he passed the board back and the siren threw up his hands.

"They were pretty and they made me think of you, so I thought I'd bring them back!" He wrote. "Look, see? They're purple and you're purple. You match."

Steve looked down at his tail and flicked the tip of it, studying.

"I guess you're right," he responded. "Well, thank you."

"You're welcome," the siren wrote with a smile.

Steve sat up, polishing off the rest of his fish.

"So, what's the deal with you?" He wrote. "For real, though."

"I told you for real," the siren replied.

"Right." Steve rolled his eyes. "Sure. The human story." The siren looked down and his shoulders deflated a little. "So your human boyfriend wasn't at all concerned by the fact that he was on the menu?" The siren's eyes flashed.

"He-You-were not 'on the menu'." The siren wrote back. "And no, you were not concerned at all."

"Sirens eat people, right?" Steve countered and the siren seemed to be avoiding his eyes.

"I don't eat innocent people," he wrote guiltily.

"But you admit you _do_ eat people?" Steve replied and the siren was frowning deeply now.

"What else am I supposed to do?" He scrawled. "It's not my fault everything else makes me sick." He shook his head now. "Look, we've had this conversation a lot. You don't remember, but we have."

Steve took the board back, studying the siren's face. He seemed genuine. He sat up now and pushed his hair out of his face, folding his tail underneath him, and Steve saw as he had before that twisted scar under his hip.

"Why are you so different?" Steve wrote. "You're not like any siren I've ever seen."

"I'm not any different," the siren wrote and Steve shook his head.

"That's not true and you know it. Answer my question," he wrote back. The siren shrugged uncomfortably.

"I'm-" he wrote and hesitated. Steve looked from his board and back up to his face. "I guess it was you. You changed me."

"Oh really," Steve wrote skeptically.

"Love does funny things," the siren wrote.

"Uhuh," Steve responded. "Alright well, whatever. I don't care. But if you're going to follow me around, we need to set some boundaries to respect, because your boundary-crossing track record so far is really, really bad."

He didn't give the siren a chance to answer and instead only flashed the board at him and began to write more.

"Cut it out with the touching, first off," Steve wrote. "I thought I'd been pretty clear about that, but you keep touching me anyways." The siren bit his lip and nodded slowly. "That means no more hugging, okay?" Steve continued. "No hugging or grabbing or kissing or assaulting or whatever it is you think you're doing. Not unless I say yes first, got it?"

The siren nodded obediently.

"No beaching. That one should be pretty obvious, but apparently, it wasn't before. So none of that. Ever. Anything that makes me completely helpless like that is a no-no, you hear me?" Steve wrote and the siren nodded again. Steve scrawled one more sentence and handed the board back. "You do all that, I'll let you follow me around, alright? Deal?"

"Deal!" The siren wrote enthusiastically. "So, you forgive me then?"

Steve rolled his eyes and shrugged and took the board when the siren prodded him with it.

"Sure, yeah, I guess I forgive you," he wrote.

"Thank you for letting me stay with you, Steve," the siren wrote once he got the board back and Steve shrugged again. "You're my lifeline, you know." He added in small, slow letters. "I know you must think I'm just an annoyance, but you're everything to me."

Steve didn't know what to say when it was his turn with the board. He swallowed.

"Oh," he wrote and shoved it back awkwardly. Unfortunately, the siren went on.

"I used to rely on you so much and I didn't even quite realize how much until now, now that you're different." He wrote. "You were like a moral compass. You were my true north. And you remembered things I didn't and knew things I didn't know and now-" The siren stopped and he rubbed at his eyes with the back of his hand. Steve was at a loss. "I feel so alone," the siren continued. "No one's left to remember the story of us except for me and I don't have all the details and you're here and I can keep you now, but I can't really because you don't love me anymore." He glanced up at Steve, who was staring, mortified. He didn't know how to respond to this outpouring of emotion. This was so uncomfortable. "Everything hurts all the time," he finished.

A few quiet minutes passed and Steve listened to the constant and palpable sound of the ocean in his ears. The siren stared at the ground and drew shapes into the sand with the tip of his finger.

"Do you have a name," Steve asked after a while and pushed the board gently back towards the siren. The siren looked at the words and took up the pen.

"You named me Bucky," the board said when it was returned to Steve.


	39. Chapter Thirty-Eight

Chapter Thirty-Eight

Bucky couldn't keep his eyes off Steve. He was wonderful, especially as he grew more and more tolerant of Bucky's presence. He'd panicked when he'd woken up earlier and Steve was gone, but when he was back almost comically fast and with a shark on his tail, Bucky realized that Steve _needed_ him. Steve could be hurt without him. He had to stay with Steve. For his own good.

That day, Bucky convinced Steve to go with him to the surface of the water, following a ship.

"Watch this," he'd written on the board they now shared and now Steve was beside him in the water as Bucky stuck his head up next to the passenger ship. He shot a grin down at Steve and then looked back up at the ship and started to sing.

Before too long, a couple new boards and various pens were flung over the side of the ship towards them and Bucky dashed through the water to collect them all. He returned to Steve after a moment and presented the collection and Steve seemed almost impressed. They divvied up the pens and board between them and then returned to the spot they'd spent the night. There, Bucky stretched himself out on the sand close to Steve and laid his head down on his arms and closed his eyes, but he hadn't napped for long before Steve was prodding him with his board and Bucky rolled over.

"What?" He wrote and Steve held his board up.

"What happened to your tail," he asked. Bucky glanced down at his tail.

"Nothing, it's fine," he wrote. Granted, it was different from Steve's, obviously, and Bucky found himself comparing them yet again, wishing his tail was as pretty.

"I mean that scar," Steve wrote. "How did you get that scar." Bucky, dragged out of his daydreams of being a merman, realized with a sinking feeling just which scar Steve was referring to. He refused to look down at it.

"I got attacked," he replied curtly.

"You?" Steve wrote, scoffing. "What would be stupid enough to attack you? And you didn't kick it's ass?"

"It was a human, while I was on land," Bucky wrote. His shoulders deflated. "With you."

It had occurred to Bucky before that this situation was all his fault, as it occurred to him again now. If he'd stayed on land with Steve (and presumably died), Steve would never have been hit with his poison and if he were never poisoned, Bucky would never have had to put him up in that cave and if Bucky hadn't put him in that cave…

"On land," Steve repeated and Bucky nodded. "How was that."

"It's a whole different world," Bucky wrote back. He couldn't help but look up at the top of the water now, imagining it. "They have these things called TVs and big comfy squares called mattresses and they put water in these tiny little tubs and sit in them. It's mostly sort of scary."

"And then what, human me attacked you?" Steve asked dryly, like he didn't believe a word of what Bucky said about TVs and comfy squares.

"Someone thought they would be protecting you if they killed me," Bucky replied. "Can we not talk about it anymore please?"

"Alright, yeesh, fine," Steve wrote and rolled his eyes and Bucky set his board down, now anxiously lost in thought about the surface. Steve held up his board again a minute later. "Sorry. I meant sorry. I didn't mean to, I dunno, freak you out or anything."

"It's fine," Bucky wrote back, touched by the way Steve suddenly cared.

That night, however, he wasn't okay and he'd promised Steve he'd try to stay up again to protect him, but he fell asleep on the sand pretty quickly. He awoke when that man's heel came down on his face and he screamed into the water. Shuddering, he looked himself up and down, running his hands down his body fast, like he had to make sure his scales were still all there and accounted for, but every time he blinked, he saw more and more of them falling out. He thought he might vomit.

Steve was asleep a few feet away and Bucky swam to him desperately, forgetting his promise not to touch, and sidled up next to him, wrapping his arms around him. All he could see was his tail, red and raw, and the handfuls of scales he'd had in his hand months ago multiplied. Steve woke up as soon as Bucky began to squeeze him, and panicked. His fists rained down on Bucky and Bucky let go almost immediately. Steve darted away from him, keeping his distance, looking irate. He dashed back down for his board and then returned. Bucky looked up at him from the sand. He kept his hands on his scales. He felt like he had to hold them on.

"WHAT THE HELL," Steve wrote in all caps. "WE TALKED ABOUT THIS."

Bucky reached for his board and forced his shaking hands to form the letters.

"I had a nightmare," he said. "I'm sorry."

"A NIGHTMARE?" Steve continued. "YOU'RE A SIREN! YOU CAN DEAL WITH A FRIGGIN' NIGHTMARE!"

"I'm sorry!" Bucky wrote again. "But I can't! I can't!"

"I DON'T CARE," Steve wrote again, and then switched back into lowercase letters, his scrawly cursive much faster to write. "Don't touch me! Don't grab me! Is it that hard to understand?"

"I'm sorry," Bucky wrote again for the third time and Steve began to sink back to the floor cautiously. Bucky started trying to inch closer to him, but when he did, Steve hit him back. Bucky remembered with longing the way he used to be cuddled. "I thought maybe we'd hug," he wrote weakly. "And we could, uh, go to sleep. Hugging." Steve stared at him incredulously.

"You stay over there!" He wrote in response. "Hug yourself!" Bucky's fingers tightened around the edge of his board. A minute and a few feet later, he responded.

"You're scared of me," he wrote and Steve stared over at him with tired eyes. He propped himself up on his elbow and wrote.

"Can you really blame me?" He asked and Bucky squeezed his eyes shut and took a deep breath.

"I'd never hurt you," he wrote.

"Just don't touch me," Steve wrote again and shoved his board away.

"I love you," Bucky wrote, but by that time, Steve was turning away and Bucky's heart fell.

He couldn't go back to sleep.


	40. Chapter Thirty-Nine

Chapter Thirty-Nine

"Do you ever wonder why you are who you are?" Bucky wrote cautiously in the morning, showing his board to Steve. Steve glanced at it and answered nonchalantly.

"Why would I?" He said.

"I dunno. I wonder sometimes," Bucky replied and stopped writing for a moment, deep in thought. A few minutes later, he continued. "What do you think the difference between mermen and sirens is?" Steve looked over at him and raised an eyebrow.

"Well, I don't know. You're-" Steve's pen hesitated and Bucky thought he could finish the sentence for him in his head. Did he mean to write evil? Did he mean to write vicious? Or ugly? Bucky listed a number of adjectives he thought Steve might answer with. "More scaly?" Steve finally finished out awkwardly. "And you eat people?"

Bucky supposed that Steve wasn't wrong.

"You know, given that the ocean could have done anything to you, why do you think it made you a merman?" Bucky asked another question and Steve was starting to glare at him now.

"I don't know! Why do you think about these things?" He scrawled and threw up his hands.

"Cause they're important! I just want to know why, there has to be a reason!" Bucky wrote back quickly. Steve huffed a breath.

"Why is a fish a fish? Why is a human a human? Why is a siren a bloody friggin siren Bucky, I don't know!" He wrote and ended his exclamation points with hard bashes to the board. Ink drifted away in the water.

Bucky put his board down and looked away. His pen started to float and he grabbed it out of the water and held it on his lap with both hands.

Steve continued after a few minutes and he held the board up under his unamused expression. "Why do you even care. It's not like you can do anything about it." Bucky looked down at his pen and sighed.

"I just wanna know what's so wrong with me that I-" Bucky wrote and then stopped himself. He wasn't sure how to go on. Steve watched him write and then looked back down at his own board. He wrote slowly, like he wasn't entirely sure what to say.

"Well, who says anything's necessarily, you know, wrong with you? It's not like you picked being a siren. Right?" Steve wrote.

"Right," Bucky conceded weakly.

"You just… _Are _one. Yeah?" Steve continued.

Bucky stared at his board miserably. "Yeah."

"So that's that." Steve said as though this solved everything.

"You don't understand!" Bucky wrote. "The ocean made you beautiful. It made you harmless. It made you as human as it possibly could and you don't have to live like me. You're like a tropical fish and I'm like a shark. I want to know why I'm the shark!"

"That's how you feel?" Steve said. He was looking at Bucky with an almost concerned expression, which wasn't one Bucky had seen on his face in a while. Was Steve actually concerned about him?

"The ocean must love you, Bucky," Steve continued. "It must want you." Then he rolled his eyes. "Given that it is some sort of magical, sentient thing like you seem think it is."

"What is that even supposed to mean?" Bucky wrote. Steve huffed, like he was admitting something he didn't want to, and began to scrawl out his answer.

"I'm a tropical fish, sure," Steve said. "I'm pretty, you said, and human-like and I don't have filed teeth in my mouth. But do you know what my chance for survival are? Almost nil. The ocean gave me glittery scales, but it gave that to me knowing they could be the death of me one day." Bucky looked at him, listening, uneasy. "You were loved and so the ocean gave you claws and fangs to take care of yourself and poison to defend yourself and took away as much of your humanity as it could because it wanted you to be a part of it. It gave you a strong tail so you could swim faster than anything else and a replacement arm so you could be comfortable and have an easier life." Steve looked at him and shook his head. "You're the top of the food chain, Bucky, and you don't have to be afraid of _anything_. Not big fish, not your own kind, not even humans! You can live comfortably knowing that if anything attacks you, taking it out will be a cinch, and even if you can't, you know you can swim away fast enough to escape. No part of the ocean is unavailable to you because it's unsafe. You can do virtually anything you want because no one's going to stop you. We live different lives Bucky, sure. But don't hate yourself so much. I'd give anything to be like you."

"You would?" Bucky wrote back incredulously. Steve frowned and huffed for a second time, his shoulders going up and down, and then he answered.

"Sure."

"Well I'd give anything to be like you!" Bucky wrote and Steve looked at him and shook his head, something of a smile starting on his face.

"Weirdest siren I ever met," he replied playfully and Bucky just smiled back at him.


	41. Chapter Forty

Chapter Forty

Later that night, Bucky began to recognize twinges of hunger starting to twist in his stomach and he realized he'd been putting off eating. He found he did that often, just eating when he absolutely had to, and sometimes he envied the other sirens. How healthy they were, and plump. He envied how easy their lives seemed, and how they could eat every meal without being tortured by their consciences. His life used to be like that. Steve used to make the sacrifices easier. Things used to be different.

He mentioned his hunger to Steve awkwardly and shamefully and Steve, as per usual, did not care.

"So go eat or something," he wrote and waved his hand nonchalantly at Bucky. "Bring me back a fish while you're at it."

"I might take a long time," Bucky replied and Steve shrugged. He laid out on the sand on his back, burrowing in lazily and throwing his arms up over his head. He shrugged up at Bucky and, resigned, Bucky began to set his writing materials down to leave. Before he could turn around, however, Steve shot up and grabbed his own board and scrawled something and held it up.

"Don't take too long, okay?" The board said. "Be back soon."

Bucky stared at the words for a long time.

"Why?" He wrote back. "Why do you want me back soon?" He felt his spirits rise just a little and Steve scowled at him.

"So nothing eats me while you're gone!" He wrote. "You're my bodyguard, remember?"

Bucky beamed at him.

"I'll be fast!" He wrote. Wow! Steve wanted him around? "I'll be back before you know it!" Steve scowled harder, obviously peeved with himself at having shown any sort of affection for Bucky. "I miss you already!" Bucky added enthusiastically. "I love you! Don't miss me too much!"

"Get out of here," Steve wrote in response and Bucky dropped his board and let it sink to the sand and swam away backwards, blowing cheerful kisses the whole time. Steve pretended to ignore them.

Finding a ship was no easy task, and especially for Bucky. He had to find the right ship and the right person before his conscious was satisfied, which meant that he went without more often than not. He'd never told that to Steve. After all, he was certainly getting by. It wasn't a problem anymore and he never starved like he did in Steve's house.

That day, Bucky came across a small houseboat with a family in it, two cruise ships and one navy ship, but no person he could justify killing. When he quit, his stomach still growling loudly, the sun was almost up again.

He snagged some fish for Steve on the way back.

By the time he returned, Steve had spent the night in the cave and was out by now, chasing a fish in circles around a reef. Bucky dropped the fish in his hands as he passed defeatedly and Steve forgot immediately about the catch he'd been pursuing.

Bucky's stomach grumbled loudly again and Steve looked at him quizzically.

"No luck," Bucky wrote, sitting down where he and Steve usually lay in the sand. "I'll try again tomorrow."

"How long can you go without?" Steve asked from behind the reef, propping his board up on a growth of coral. "Before you just, you know. Stop."

Bucky shrugged. He didn't really want to think about that. "A very long time," he replied.

"Wow," Steve wrote back and he looked genuine. "You're, like, indestructible."

This at least made Bucky laugh and he grinned at Steve.

"That's why I'm the perfect bodyguard," he replied and Steve hid his smile behind his board and turned back around, mostly hidden by the coral, and Bucky watched him, amazed. He wasn't sure, but he could almost swear Steve was warming up to him little by little.


	42. Chapter Forty-One

Chapter Forty-One

That time, Steve stayed up instead of Bucky. The day had just started when Bucky had returned, looking upset, and had immediately dropped down on the sand exhaustedly, and Steve watched him and almost found himself feeling bad. He felt guilty when Bucky delivered a nice pile of fish into his hands, but he was still running on empty. It really wasn't quite fair, Steve thought. Maybe for another siren, he wouldn't feel an ounce of pity, but for this one? Bucky was different. Steve didn't think he deserved this.

Bucky fell asleep on the sand and Steve approached him slowly, settling down on the sand near him. He took up his board and uncapped one of his pens and studied the siren's face and body, deep in thought.

He found himself drawing before he could stop himself. It wasn't easy with dry erase markers underwater, but he could capture the lines. The curve of his hip. The curl in his tail. The fine angles of his jaw. Steve wanted to admire him all day. He'd started noticing Bucky's features earlier, like he was looking at the artwork of a fine sword or a sleeping wolf. Something lethal and powerful and dormant. But the more he gazed, the more he began to see Bucky instead of the siren. Not like they were two different entities, but as if together, they made something even more than either of them had been originally. He wasn't just the scary sea monster and he wasn't just the bubbling, clinging personality. He was somehow both. He was a person. It was fascinating.

Steve inched closer and closer, part of him still afraid that if he got close enough to Bucky, Bucky might reach over and snap his head off. He realized they'd never been this close while Bucky was awake. At least, not intentionally. Not happily. Steve kept a wide radius for himself, just to be on the safe side. Despite how much of him inside was starting to like this Bucky, starting to grow fond him, Steve couldn't let himself forget the potential in the sharpness of his teeth.

Steve erased his rough drawing with the heel of his palm and scooted closer, drawing now the way his hair floated around him. Then closer, to perfect the shape of the scales on his shoulder. Then, finally, frustrated with the shape of his lips, Steve dropped his board on the sand directly in front of Bucky's face and laid out next to him, stretching out his tail and lying on his stomach. He was literally just a breath away. He could feel Bucky's exhale against the back of his hands and for a while, he just stared, equal parts enamored and afraid. Then, he continued to draw.

When Bucky stirred a few minutes later and his eyes opened, Steve didn't notice immediately. He was studying his hard work, adjusting lines, but he looked up soon enough to find dark eyes looking back and his breath caught in his throat. They were so close their noses could have brushed if Steve moved another inch.

Steve remained frozen in the sand while Bucky hauled himself up slowly. Steve's eyes followed him and then his body did too and he sat across from him, trying to lean as far away as he could. Bucky was looking down at the whiteboard and he reached out and turned it around, studying. Steve tried to read his facial expression to gauge what he thought, but Bucky's face was frustratingly blank. All Steve could see there were those sad, sad eyes.

Bucky picked up the whiteboard and examined it closer. Steve watched his eyes dart across it and wished he could take it back and use it to write, like he was supposed to. He wasn't sure what he would say exactly, but a million thoughts flashed through his head

It's just a doodle, he thought. It's not very good. If you don't want me doing it anymore, I won't. It's just that your face… Steve stopped his inner monologue, stumped. He couldn't think of a good excuse. Your face… I guess I lost myself in the angles of your face. Steve couldn't say that! He wasn't exactly sure if it was the truth because a hundred emotions were warping together in his mind and he couldn't pick them all out, but regardless, he couldn't tell Bucky that.

Bucky was still staring at the drawing when Steve dragged himself out of his thoughts and he thought of something to say and reached behind himself for Bucky's board.

I'll write 'do you like it', Steve thought.

"Are you staring because my art's bad or because you're just that enamored with yourself?" He ended up writing.

Unfortunately for Steve, emotions never translated well into words. They felt soft and gentle in his head and came out with sharp edges. He supposed it only made sense, though. After all, he had to protect himself with _something_. Soft and gentle wouldn't do, would never do, unless he had the claws and muscle to back it up if need be, which he didn't. He couldn't afford soft and gentle, especially not like Bucky could.

Bucky looked up at the words and Steve's scowl behind them and back down at the drawing. He reached over and Steve handed him the board. Steve thought they might trade, but Bucky set the drawing down on the sand instead.

"I guess I have a lot of questions," he wrote in small letters at the top.

"Yes, I'll sign it for you," Steve wrote sassily in return when he got the board back, which made Bucky crack a small smile.

"You were so close to me," he replied and although it was a sentence, it came off like a question.

"Yeah, so what," Steve wrote.

"I thought you were scared of me," Bucky wrote back and Steve scoffed, rolling his eyes overdramatically.

"You're pretty scary," he wrote. "But I could take you."

"Do I really look like this?" Bucky asked.

"Yeah, that's sort of the point of life drawing," Steve wrote. Bucky looked down at the drawing and he looked like he wanted to touch it, if only it wouldn't smudge.

"I don't know if that's good or bad," he wrote slowly.

"That's rude," Steve replied. He wiped off the rest of the conversation. "You're supposed to say, 'oh Steve, your art is great, good job'."

Bucky didn't even laugh this time. He was still staring.

"No, it is good," he wrote back almost absentmindedly. "I'm just… I guess I just don't see my own face very much. We look very different."

"Aw geez, Bucky, don't get all hung up on that again," Steve scrawled and shoved the board back.

"I'm not, I'm not," Bucky replied. He hesitated. "I'm not." His eyes were still on the other board and Steve studied his face for another second before deciding that was quite enough of that and reaching over to swipe the ink off the board. Bucky blinked, startled. Steve took his own board back and rubbed it all off. "Why did you do that?" Bucky wrote quickly while Steve was erasing and Steve looked up and let out a huff of breath into the water.

"Cause I need something write on, doofus," Steve replied after a minute.

"Have you drawn me like that before?" Bucky asked. Steve lied right to his face.

"No, of course not," he wrote.


	43. Chapter Forty-Two

_Heads up, this one's kinda gory. -BlitheBells_

Chapter Forty-Two

The next day, Steve helped Bucky hunt, which seemed to Steve like an ironic turn of events. Bucky had seemed surprised and confused when Steve suggested he go with him that morning, but Steve got away with the excuse that he didn't want to be left alone like shark bait for too long. It wasn't that this wasn't true, but it was also true that Steve felt sort of bad for Bucky and wished he could help.

So they swam together near the surface of the water and Steve followed Bucky. Occasionally, Steve would eye something and pop his head out and point wildly until Bucky joined him above water. Every time, Bucky would squint at the ship for a second and then shake his head.

"Picky eater," Steve accused once playfully and Bucky rolled his eyes and ducked back under the water.

They searched all day and Steve was starting to tire, but he refused to let Bucky know.

Bucky reached over for his hand a few times and when Steve yanked it back, Bucky bit his lip and looked away, hurt. He did this a few times, as though it was instinctual and he continually forgot the distance Steve was trying to keep.

Bucky's skin was cold, when it brushed Steve. He was almost colder than the water around them.

As the sun began to sink, Steve swam back up to the surface and gestured for Bucky to follow him, and as soon as his head broke into the air, he glared over at Bucky.

"What is it with you and _touching_?" He demanded. Bucky looked at him and only blinked. He shrugged one shoulder weakly and sunk a little further so half his face was submerged, like he wanted to hide. "You're the touchiest person I've ever met," Steve continued. "All you want to do is hug or hold hands or sit close together. Like you don't wanna take your hands off me. What's your deal?"

Bucky lifted his face just enough to mouth 'sorry' and give Steve a frown.

Steve let out a breath and looked away, slicking back his wet hair with his hands until it laid across his head flat.

"It doesn't matter that much," he said. "I'm just saying."

Bucky looked down at the water miserably and Steve felt himself cave a little.

"It's comforting," he guessed. "Isn't it?" Bucky nodded slowly without lifting his head and Steve huffed for a second time. He reached out over the water towards Bucky. "Give me your hand," he commanded and Bucky's head snapped up. He looked back and forth from Steve's face to his outstretched hand, stunned, and didn't move. Frustrated, Steve swam closer and reached for Bucky's hand under the water, squeezing his cold, webbed fingers. Bucky slowly squeezed back and clung to him. Steve found himself clinging back. "There," he said. "Now are you happy?"

Overwhelmed, Bucky sucked in a breath and ducked his whole head underwater so he could clap his left hand over his mouth. He turned his head away from Steve, but Steve could see his shoulders starting to shake as he sunk lower and joined him under the water. Steve squeezed his hand again and inched closer, concerned. He put his other hand on Bucky's shoulder and Bucky looked over at him with teary eyes.

Steve wasn't sure he had been entirely ready to hug Bucky again, but Bucky looked like he needed it and so Steve cautiously picked his arms up and wrapped them around Bucky's shoulders and drew him close. Bucky held him with an overcautious gentleness, like Steve might snap in half, but then he sobbed and squeezed a little harder.

If it means this much to you, I can hold your damn hand, Steve thought.

He was starting to forget why he had been keeping that distance in the first place. Bucky was the definition of harmless.

That's when he spotted another ship in the water behind Bucky.

Hey! He thought and started hitting Bucky's shoulders to get his attention. When Bucky looked up, confused, Steve whirled him around and pointed him in the direction of the huge wooden hull coming their way.

They popped out of the water to get a better look.

"How's that?" Steve asked excited. "Look, there's a black flag and everything. Evil enough for you?" Bucky looked over at Steve with a big, sharp-toothed grin, and Steve grinned back, happy for him. Bucky grabbed his hand again and tugged him along and Steve let himself be dragged towards the edge of the ship. He watched from behind Bucky as men dangled over the railing of their own ship by their fingertips, following the commands in Bucky's hypnotic song. When one of them finally fell over, Bucky's singing cut off with a pleased growl and he dove underwater to catch him. Steve followed and watched as Bucky first snapped the man's neck with one, fluid motion. He'd never seen anything like it and he ground to a halt, suddenly shellshocked, like he'd been hit. Bucky sunk his claws and fingers deep into the man's chest, all the way up to his knuckles, and red began to darken the water. Then, Bucky looked at Steve over his shoulder. Steve tried to control his face. He didn't want to look as horrified as he felt. He supposed he hadn't anticipated this, although he should have. For half a second, with his hands inches deep in a dead human, Bucky almost didn't look like Bucky. Steve felt his stomach threaten to upturn it's contents.

Bucky looked back down and and slowly extricated one of his hands from the body. Blood was everywhere, rising into the water they both were breathing, and there was gore caked on his fingers. Steve couldn't seem to tear his eyes away. He really might vomit. He was beginning to taste the blood in his gills. With his now free hand, Bucky waved Steve away frantically. Steve refused. He felt rooted into place. Bucky made a face and waved again and Steve got another big gulp of water thick with human blood. He clapped his hands over his mouth as bile rose and forced himself to move, swimming away.

Bucky watched him leave for a while before turning back around and Steve had to look away. The word bloodbath had never been so literal and Steve couldn't get over the fact that he'd just been holding the hand that was now six inches deep in a human chest cavity.

Definition of harmless my _ass_, Steve thought hollowly.


	44. Chapter Forty-Three

Chapter Forty-Three

Bucky met Steve back at the cave mouth an hour or so later, after having finished and having cleaned himself up a little. He was afraid to face him. All he could see in his mind was the look on Steve's face. It was burned into his memory. All the progress they'd made would be gone. Steve would never hold his hand again. He would never trust him again. Bucky would forever be stuck at sea monster status. It was over.

Steve was sitting up on the sand and hugging his tail to his chest like human knees and Bucky was sure to keep his distance.

He waved cautiously when Steve looked up and he expected Steve to look furious or to tell him to go away or worse, still look afraid. But instead, Steve mustered a weak smile and waved back.

Bucky swam a little closer. Steve wrote something on a whiteboard.

"That looked really appetizing," he said, classic Steve's dry humor, and Bucky wished he could laugh. Steve pushed another whiteboard across the sand at him and Bucky bent down to grab it.

"I scared you," he wrote. "I'm so sorry."

"Don't worry about it," Steve responded. "I'm over it."

"I didn't think," Bucky wrote.

"But are you feeling any better?" Steve asked.

"You care?" Bucky asked in response.

"It's a yes or no question, Bucky," Steve shot back and slowly, Bucky nodded.

"You don't hate me?" He asked.

"Naw. I've seen worse," Steve shrugged. He was clearly trying to act nonchalant.

"You have?" Bucky asked and he wasn't sure, but he thought Steve went a little green.

"Watched a siren gut a merman once," Steve admitted. "And that one didn't politely ask me to leave first." Bucky swallowed.

"I didn't know that," he replied. What a horror it must have been for Steve, Bucky thought, his heart breaking. What a monster I must have seemed.

Another voice in his head screamed. What else am I supposed to do? It's not my fault!

"Cause it's not a big deal," Steve wrote back. "Really."

"You'll never hold my hand again," Bucky wrote slowly, terrified, and Steve shook his head.

"Don't do that," he replied. "Don't start with the self pity train. I'm still gonna hold your hand."

"Why?" Bucky asked.

"Because it makes you feel better!" Steve replied like it was obvious.

"But don't you think I'm a monster?" Bucky continued. Steve just rolled his eyes.

"Look," he wrote. "That was definitely a little unsettling for sure. And I accidentally breathed in some of the blood and that was gross. But it's like we've talked about before. You're a siren. This sort of comes with the whole deal. And if you were a contract, well, I've already signed."

This hit Bucky hard and he sunk down to the sand across from Steve and covered his face. He could hardly believe this was happening. He realized part of him had been attempting to resign himself to losing Steve forever. That this was it for them. A level of stress and tension that Bucky hadn't realized had been seizing up inside him relaxed then.

He took his hands away and looked up when he felt the corner of a whiteboard prodding him.

"What?" The board said. "Is that a bad thing?" Steve handed Bucky his own board and Bucky took to scrawling an answer fast.

"No, no," he wrote. "It's a very good thing. I'm happy. Really. Thank you."

Steve reached over and grabbed his arm and dragged him closer and Bucky followed where he wanted him to go until he was sitting right next to him.

"Can I kiss your cheek please?" Bucky asked and Steve looked down at his words and then nodded and Bucky leaned over to very gently peck Steve's face. It had been a long time since he'd had so much hope for them.


	45. Chapter Forty-Four

Chapter Forty-Four  
They spent the rest of the day close together and Steve watched Bucky carefully test each boundary, seeing how close he could come before Steve scooted away and how many kisses he could ask for before Steve said no.

Steve let him give probably too many kisses, but refused when he asked for a kiss on the lips. Bucky was still elated.

"Can I kiss your cheek again?" Bucky would ask and Steve would say yes. And Bucky would kiss him there. Then, Bucky would hold up his hand in one hand and his whiteboard in the other and ask, "can I kiss your fingers?" And Steve would say yes and Bucky would grin and kiss each of his knuckles and scoot forward.

"Can I kiss your shoulders?"

"Can I kiss your nose?"

"Can I kiss your forehead?"

"Can I kiss your palms?"

While Bucky's head was bent over each of Steve's overturned hands, pressing his lips gently to the skin there, Steve let himself grin far too giddily and only stopped when Bucky looked up again. Then, instead of asking politely for another kiss, Bucky wrote something else and Steve felt like he'd been verbally punched in the gut.

"It's just like when you were human," Bucky wrote excitedly. "We're finally friends again and Steve, you're just the same. Now we can finally be together!" Steve stared a little. Human? They were going to talk about humans?

"I still think you're out of your mind," Steve replied and rolled his eyes, trying not to show how much he'd been phased. "You must have dreamed up this human junk." Bucky's expression fell. He leaned over his board and scribbled fiercely.

"I didn't!" He wrote. "It really happened!"

"Stop it, no it didn't," Steve argued back, staring to get angry. "Just quit talking about it, like it would even matter if it _did_ happen." Bucky took a breath and scowled.

"It does matter," he wrote.

"Change the subject, Bucky," Steve demanded.

"No," Bucky challenged back and now frustrated, Steve threw his board and marker down on the sand and looked away. His marker floated upwards in the water until he grabbed it and shoved it down into the sand. "Steve," Bucky wrote. "Don't do this. Talk to me."

Steve hated the fixation Bucky had with this idea that they were human. It was stupid. It didn't make sense. And honestly, it scared him and he didn't want to think about it. Every time Bucky brought it up, he felt sick. He didn't like the idea that he'd had a whole other life that he couldn't remember. He didn't like the idea that he might have been a different person, that he might have changed. It sounded dumb, but change was scary and this wild notion, well, it wasn't exactly a comfortable thought.

The longer Steve spent with Bucky, the more a different fear grew in him as well. If Bucky had loved a human him, well, what if that was all he loved? Was that the entire basis of their relationship? Was that all this was? Bucky wanting something he used to have?

Steve didn't usually think he had to worry about Bucky liking him. After all, the problem was ordinarily that Bucky liked him _too_ much, but as Steve began to retaliate the feelings, just a little, much as he was loathe to admit it, he didn't want to think that all Bucky liked him for was a person he was in the past.

Stop talking about a different me! He wanted to shout at Bucky. If you're going to love me, then stop obsessing about what was and love what you see right now! Right here! It's all you get so learn to like it!

Bucky was writing more and more frantically as Steve thought these things, trying to get Steve to respond to him again, and finally, Steve glared over at him. He was ready to talk. No, he was ready to _scream_.

Steve pushed himself up and swam for the surface where he could get a breath of air and scream himself hoarse right in Bucky's face and Bucky followed, significantly faster, as usual. When Steve broke out into the open air, he sucked in a breath and threw his head back and slicked his hair out of his face. Bucky swam in front of him, looking at him expectantly, and Steve glared.

"Stop!" He yelled. His voice sounded too loud and yet not loud enough over the entire ocean. Bucky flinched at the sound. "Stop talking about him, this human guy, like he's some sort of damn ideal, alright?"

Bucky ducked under water just low enough to be able to use both hands to write and then held his board up.

"But you are pretty ideal, Steve," he'd written and he tried to smile lightheartedly at Steve, but Steve wasn't having it.

"I mean it," he growled. "I don't wanna hear about this guy anymore, got it?"

"But why?" Bucky responded and Steve frowned at him.

"Because he's dead, Bucky!" Steve yelled and Bucky winced again. He bit down on his bottom lip and Steve could see the tips of each razored tooth. "He died! And he's gone!"

Bucky seemed to be at a loss for words. He looked down at his whiteboard and back up again silently. His eyes were starting to water. He looked like he'd been hit.

Steve stared back at him and then threw his hands down, slapping the water. He blinked ocean water out of his eyes.

"Do you love me or not, Bucky?" Steve demanded and Bucky took in a shuddering breath. He scribbled on his board.

"I love you so much," he'd written.

"Then stop," Steve said. He blinked again, cursing the water. He slicked his hair back again and let out a breath and rubbed his eyes. He lowered his voice. "Stop. Love _me_, okay? Me. Not him. Me."

Bucky stared at him for a while and Steve tried to swallow back a lump in his throat, but damn it, there was more saltwater in his eyes and the harder he blinked, the worse it got. He was very angry with himself. Water was streaming down his cheeks.

Bucky came closer after a while and Steve crossed his arms angrily.

"Never mind," he said spitefully after a minute, trying to control his wobbling voice. "Forget I said anything. I don't care."

"Does it make you feel better if I do this?" Bucky asked and Steve glared at him.

"Do what?" He said. Bucky took another moment to write everything out.

"I know you're not human. I don't expect you to be human and I love you like this. I like you as a merman. I love _you_ more than anything. You means gills and tail and all," he wrote. Steve blinked at the words and swallowed and Bucky looked at him.

After a minute, he wrote more. "I should have known how you felt, Steve. I completely understand, I felt that way, too." Steve scoffed.

"Oh, really?" He said, rolling his eyes. "Your perfect human Steve hurt you once?"

"He hurt me a lot," Bucky responded far too solemnly and far too quickly. Steve took another breath.

"I thought you said you loved this guy," he said.

"I did. I do. I love you with all my heart, but we had our ups and downs. We weren't perfect," Bucky said and Steve looked at him, concerned.

"What happened," he said quietly and Bucky hesitated in responded. He used his underwater hand to rub the ink away, even though he knew it would get into his hand and dye the water there black. He wrote again.

"You would rather hide from your feelings," he explained. "Than face them. And that hurt us a lot. And it took you a long time to accept that I wasn't human anymore. It made me feel bad. I don't want to do that to you."

Steve was now the one speechless. He looked at Bucky and rubbed at his wet cheeks.

"Oh," he said quietly.

"It's okay," Bucky continued. "I just don't want you to feel bad. That's all."

"Well...," Steve said and didn't finish.

"I won't bring up humans again if you don't want me to," Bucky added quietly and Steve looked at him and nodded a little. Then, "Can I have a hug?" Bucky asked.

"Yeah," Steve said.


	46. Chapter Forty-Five

Chapter Forty-Five  
That night, Bucky was still pushing every boundary he had and he fell asleep so close to Steve, Steve could swear he felt their breaths mingle. He stayed up, again watching Bucky's relaxed face so near to his, the teeth behind his lips that just weren't scary anymore and the tiny, soft scales that faded away into skin on his cheek no longer unnatural-looking. His chest rose and fell slowly and Steve watched.

Around midnight, Steve still couldn't fall asleep and he sat up and leaned over and looked at Bucky again. He was reminded of the time Bucky had woken him up, telling him about sleeping and hugging at the same time and he wondered if maybe that wasn't such a bad idea after all.

Bucky sighed a little and shifted in his sleep and Steve's fingers itched to again draw him.

Geez, I love you, he thought and upon realizing this, his heart stopped and his smile fell.

Steve frowned and looked down at the siren next to him and forced himself to remember that's what Bucky was. He was a siren. And sirens _killed_ people like Steve.

What am I _doing_?! Steve thought to himself and pushed himself up, swimming away, hesitating in the water above Bucky. This isn't normal! No merman goes around hugging sirens, _loving _sirens! No merman goes around hugging anything at all! What am I doing?!

He hadn't looked at the situation outside himself for some time and now that he was, he felt horrified. Love? This was ridiculous! Bucky was a siren and Steve, he couldn't do this. It didn't make any sense. It just wasn't normal.

I don't love you! Steve thought and in a moment of panic, Steve took one last look at the sleeping Bucky and turned around, swimming away as fast as he could.

The water was dark and it was difficult to see, but Steve kept going, fueled by his confusion. He warred in his head, back and forth between Bucky the siren, the one who could split open a human's rib cage with his bare hands, who could poison somebody and doom them to a quick, painful death, who could snap Steve in half if he ever had the slightest change of mind about him, and Bucky as his friend. Who had so much love and affection that he could hardly contain it, who saw pretty seashells and brought them back just for Steve to look at, who grinned and gazed at him with those adoring eyes.

I thought you'd already made your decision about him, Steve accused himself. Going back on your word already? You told him he was a contract you'd signed. What happened to that?

Sure, Steve thought in rebuttal. But he's a _siren_. It's like saying I'm going to be friends with certain death! Is it okay to back out if the contract I signed was my death warrent?

But he's Bucky!

But he's a siren!

So what! Steve sucked in water and let it out. So what! He's a siren! It's not like he can help that! And he's-

-NOT harmless, actually, he is very, very capable of harm.

And when did he ever hurt you?

Do you not remember three days drying out on a rock?

He apologized.

You should leave now and never go back!

You should turn around and wake him up and tell him you love him!

Steve came to a halt and sucked in a deep breath. He swallowed and ran his hands through his hair, tangling his fingers in the floating strands.

But _do_ you love him? He asked himself. He swam up and burst out of the water, flicking his hair back and wiping rivers of water off his face. Do I love him? Do I?

Loving a siren is ridiculous. No one's ever done this before!

I don't love him!

But we were together. I do love him. Steve let out a shuddering breath and rubbed his face. The wind around him almost made the ocean seem warm and his teeth were starting to chatter. He stared up at the sky. The sun was starting to make it's appearance on the horizon. We were a pair. No one else around here has that. It's a fish eat fish world and for one brief shining second, well, it just wasn't. Not for me. I had a friend. And I'm just going to leave him now? Go back to living alone and afraid and angry until something inevitably swallows me whole, is that my plan?

Steve glanced back down at the water underneath him. Bucky was only a mile or so away. Steve could be back in a couple minutes if he wanted to, if he went as fast as he could.

I gotta decide now, he told himself. Now or never. Bucky or no Bucky. Siren and friend or nothing at all.

Do I love him?

Steve cupped his face in his hands and groaned, and then he turned back around and dove back into the water.

Why is this even a debate, he thought angrily as he swam back to Bucky.

Bucky was up by the time Steve returned and the closer Steve got, the more he could see how distressed Bucky was, could see his shoulders shaking as he turned around in circles again and again. Steve felt his heart swell and his mood lift looking at him and he pumped his tail harder.

Steve attacked Bucky from behind and Bucky became rigid and stiff in an instant as Steve wrapped his arms around him. Steve laughed a little into the water, glad to be free of his conflict, happy with his decision to be tied only to Bucky, and began to kiss him all over in true Bucky fashion. He was busy making sure each individual scale on Bucky's shoulder had been kissed when Bucky broke out of his grasp and turned around, shocked. Steve grinned at him and threw himself at him again, arms around his neck, kissing his face and his neck, and slowly, Bucky put his arms around Steve's waist, pulling him in, like he couldn't believe this was happening.

Steve took Bucky and tried to twirl him and was a little embarrassed to find he wasn't strong enough to budge him, but Bucky started grinning and tightened his hands on Steve's waist and before he knew it, they were spinning through the water like a torpedo and Steve gripped Bucky tightly.

When they broke water, Steve took a big gulp of air.

"I have to tell you I love you!" He cried in between more hungry kisses all over Bucky's skin. "I just sort of thought that might be important for you to know! And I don't really want to be without you ever! I picked you!"

Bucky grinned at him and began to return the kisses. Their lips met a few times and Bucky cupped Steve's face in his hands and smothered him in more kisses and Steve wound the very tip of his tail around Bucky's.

"I figure you'd want to say, I love you too, right?" Steve asked breathlessly and Bucky nodded furiously before continuing his line of kisses down Steve's neck. Their fingers twisted together and Steve didn't think he could have Bucky close enough.

A while later, when they finally calmed down, Steve rested his forehead against Bucky's and ran his fingers down Bucky's hair and Bucky smiled and closed his eyes and gave Steve a few lazy kisses every so often.

"You know," Steve mused as they held each other. "I'm not really the happiest merman, and you hate being a siren, but I think…" He interrupted himself to share one more kiss with Bucky and murmured the rest into his lips. "I think I'm actually pretty happy with what the water gave me."

THE END

_Hey! Now that we're at the end, I hope everyone enjoyed this and I want to hear what everyone thought!_

_Keep your eyes peeled for some of my concept art I'll be posting soon! In the meantime, check out my blog under my What the Water Gave Me tag to see some of the _beautiful _fanworks created for this fic! They're all incredibly stellar! -BlitheBells_


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